WASHINGTON — Congress’ midsummer to-do list may take until Christmas to clear. At the top are maintaining the flow of highway funding, easing automatic budget cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies, renewing tax breaks and raising the debt limit. A misstep at any of several points could trigger a partial government shutdown.
“We’re going to leave that fight till September, October, November, December,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters last week, referring to spending issues and raising the prospect of Christmas in the Capitol.
Such a stack of unfinished business would be a time-consuming challenge in a well-oiled capital. But Washington has a case of chronic dysfunction, meaning there’s little sense of urgency and the real potential for policymakers to end up doing the bare minimum — keeping the government on autopilot and avoiding an economy-rattling debt default.
An eventual repeat of a government shutdown is a real possibility. The Associated Press
