The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Congress will face logjam upon return GOP getting more skeptical that it can get everything done.
WASHINGTON — An iffy health care vote. An unresolved budget resolution. A heavy debt ceiling lift. And, of course, there is that tax overhaul plan.
Congress has a lot to do, and it doesn’t have much time. So much for a lazy July in Washington.
When members of Congress return next week from their Fourth of July break, they will be greeted by a mammoth legislative logjam. Republicans are increasingly skeptical that they can get everything done. There are even calls from some to forgo their sacred August recess — a respite from the capital in its swampiest month.
“Our current Senate calendar shows only 33 potential working days remaining before the end of the fiscal year,” a group of 10 Republican senators wrote last Friday in a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, highlighting the deadline at the end of September. “This does not appear to give us enough time to adequately address the issues that demand imme di ate attention.”
The Republican Party is under intense pressure to achieve something of consequence in that limited time to demonstrate that the first year of the Trump administration has been a success. So far, the ambitious agenda has stagnated without a signature achievement.
“Everyone is coming to the realization that Republicans are going to need to sprint to the end of the year,” said Ken Spain, a former spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee who now lobbies for companies on tax issues. “A lot of th e legislative maneuvering in July will lay the groundwork for them to do so.”
The first order of business when lawmakers return remains reaching a swift conclusion to the debate over how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, an ambition that has bedeviled Republicans since President Donald Trump entered the White House. The grappling over how to proceed has laid bare deep divisions within the party and stalled progress for the next items on the agenda, a federal budget deal and a tax overhaul. A vote on health care could drag on until mid-July or later depending on when Senate Republicans deliver a new bi ll to the Congressional Budget Office for an all-important evaluation.
The straggling health bill has backed up other major priorities, setting the stage for a government shutdown or even a default in the fall if the debt ceiling is not raised in time.
The specter of a debt ceiling breach as lawm ak ers work to lift the statutory borrowing limit adds another t wist to a complex set of problems.
Reaching deal could go down to the wire
The Congressional Budget Office said last week that the Treasury can probably go until mid-October before it exhausts its “extraordinary powers” to keep paying the federal government’s bills. But Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has been pressuring Congress to lift the debt ceiling by the end of July to avoid disrupting the markets. With Republicans split over whether spending cuts or changes to the budget process should be tied to the raising of the debt limit, reaching a deal could go down to the wire.
Perhaps equally complicated for a factionalized Republican caucus is the task of reaching an agreement on a budget resolution. This is necessary for unlocking the legislative tool, known as reconciliation, that will allow Republicans to embark on rewriting the tax code without the participation of Democrats.
But so far consensus has been elusive.
House Republicans have been wrestling with a budget package that would increase military spending ab ove what Trump requested in his budget and higher than the caps imposed by the Budget Control Act of 2011. However, they have been unable to agree on how to spread the pain of $200 billion in spending cuts. Passing a budget that lifts the caps will be an especially difficult challenge because it will require the support of Democrats in the Senate. The Democrats are loath to help without increases in spending for domestic programs.
The timing makes the Republicans’ tasks especially tricky. More moderate Republican members of the House, known as the Tuesday Group, have urged House Speaker Paul Ryan to delay the budget until health care legislation is passed — or abandoned — so that lawmakers have a clearer picture of the fiscal backdrop they face.
“It will be extremely difficult to simultaneously negotiate a health care plan that can pass the Senate and the House while negotiating a bipartisan budget deal,” said Ed Lorenzen of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan research organization that preaches fiscal prudence. “There may be enough time legislatively to do both, but there isn’t enough bandwidth to negotiate two complex, controversial items.”
That confluence of fiscal battles could end up putting Trump’ s tax overhaul in retreat. Trump’ s economic advisers and leaders in Congress have promised to unveil a unified tax plan soon after Labor Day, leaving them with little time to reach agreement on many contentious issues.
Republicans have so far failed to agree on whether a border adjustment tax on imports will be part of a final plan. There is also no consensus on how to handle the deductibility of corporate interest expenses and how to prevent taxpayers from using a lower pass-through tax rate on small businesses as a loophole.
The business world is growing increasingly impatient. Last week four of the biggest lobbying groups — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Federa- tion of Independent Business — ur ged congressional leaders to stay focused on tax cuts. “Given the historic opportunit y before Congress, no other reforms under consideration rise to the impor tance of progrowth, comprehensive tax reform,” they said.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Sc humer contends that Republicans are failing because they insist on working only with one another.
“The Republicans’ partisan approach has been the thing that’s tripped them up this year,” Schumer said. “If they continue that approach in July, they’ll have a tough time. If they abandon it, they might be able to get some things done.”
Of course, some of the pressure that Republicans are under is of their own making. The budget and debt ceiling can be addressed in the fall, and there will be little harm if the tax overhaul drifts into early 2018.
“They have to separate the things they have to do from the things they would like to do,” said Rohit Kumar, a tax expert at the accounting firm PwC and former deputy chief of staff to McConnell. “If health care doesn’t happen before August recess, then health care is done.”
The wild card continues to be Trump.
“His tweets in general have discomfited many of his Republican allies,” said Steve Bell, a former Republican staff director of the Senate Budget Committee who now works at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Here is the majorit y leader trying to get votes. Boom comes all of these tweets, and people say, ‘I’m done with dealing with this guy for a while.’ ”
A veteran of the vicious fights over taxes and budgets from the 1980s, Bell said, “This is particularly messy.”