Congress is back with a budget to pass, but this time a shutdown seems unlikely

The presidential debate and the campaign for control of the White House and Congress will likely dominate the news this week. But there is still work to be done in Washington.

Congress is back from its Labor Day break and facing the annual deadline for funding the government by the end of the month.

Ideally, by this point in the year, Congress would have passed 12 separate appropriations bills, sent them to the president, and then we’d have funding for the government for another fiscal year.

“But in practice, Congress tends to push off those decisions until a little bit later in the year,” said Philip Wallach, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

That’s where we are this year. And while we are all well-used to the stop-gap spending bills, known as continuing resolutions or CRs, Wallach said one difference in an election year is that we may be a bit less likely to risk a government shutdown.

“Somebody has to end up holding the bag for a shutdown,” he said. “But right ahead of an election where the other side will do everything they can to heap up the blame, I don’t see either party really seeing it as in their interests.”

So folks here in Washington are pretty convinced there will be a deal ahead of the Sept. 30 deadline, but the details are still getting hammered out. There could be a CR that would just get us well into the new presidential term.

Or “the next most likely option would be a continuing resolution that brings us to the other side of the election,” noted Jasmine Farrier, a political science professor at the University of Louisville. “And this would be interesting, because the leverage would change based on who wins the White House, who wins the House majority, and who wins the Senate majority.”

Depending on who holds those reins of power, the way the government chooses to spend our money can change pretty significantly.

A continuing resolution can also give the parties a chance to stake out political priorities that may not get much attention otherwise.

“And so right now,” said AEI’s Philip Wallach, “Republicans are hoping to pass a six-month continuing resolution with one of their favorite bills, the Save Act, attached to it.”

That bill would add new voter verification requirements to participate in federal elections, which is unlikely to make it through the Senate. President Joe Biden has already promised to veto it.

“But by attaching it to the continuing resolution now, they can sort of get it back in the news cycle,” Wallach said. “Here we are talking about it now.”

Wallach added it’s a familiar dance now: We do it every year in the fall.