Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner (right) arrives at a meeting to nominate candidates for his replacement.

Outgoing House Speaker John Boehner (right) arrives at a meeting to nominate candidates for his replacement. Evan Vucci/AP

Republicans Have 2 Months to Fund Government, Raise the Debt Ceiling and More

Can the majority figure out how to do this plus fund highways and elect a speaker in the next eight weeks?

Con­gress is back in town after a brief re­cess. And now it faces a two-month stretch of mind-numb­ing chal­lenges.  

It must avert a gov­ern­ment-shut­down dead­line of Dec. 11, raise the coun­try’s bor­row­ing au­thor­ity by Nov. 3, and fund in­fra­struc­ture pro­jects past the end of Oc­to­ber, as well as ex­tend a series of pop­u­lar-but-ex­pired tax breaks.

It would be a daunt­ing sched­ule even be­fore con­sid­er­ing these com­plic­a­tions: a House GOP without an idea who its next speak­er will be or when John Boehner will resign, a House re­volt vote to re­store the Ex­port-Im­port bank over the ob­jec­tions of con­ser­vat­ives and even some GOP lead­ers, pre­cious time spent to hon­or Vet­er­ans Day, and a week back home to cut the Thanks­giv­ing tur­key.

So it’s no sur­prise that seni­or GOP aides pre­dict that Con­gress won’t be able to craft and pass a bill to fund the gov­ern­ment in the next few weeks, and why out­side budget ex­perts have pegged the odds of a gov­ern­ment shut­down a toss-up, con­cerned that rais­ing the debt lim­it without con­ces­sions to the GOP on en­ti­tle­ments—as the White House and Demo­crats are re­portedly fight­ing—will in­flame the hard right on the next fight.

Still, some on K Street are con­fid­ent that the sides can come to­geth­er for a two-year budget deal, as the 2011 budget law known as se­quest­ra­tion has left Re­pub­lic­an de­fense hawks and Demo­crats fum­ing.

“I’m go­ing to tell ya, I don’t like to use the words ‘bust the caps,’” said Jim Dyer, a former top House Ap­pro­pri­ations staffer now at the Podesta Group. “Let’s just say I’m con­fid­ent the caps will be ad­jus­ted up­ward to re­flect the real­it­ies of life in 2016 as op­posed to the pro­jec­tions of life in 2011, when these caps were lif­ted out of thin air.”

How to do that is a ma­jor ques­tion. In Septem­ber, Sen­ate Ma­jor­ity Lead­er Mitch Mc­Con­nell said he was look­ing for a two-year budget—which would clear the decks for the next pres­id­ent—and that Con­gress will in­ev­it­ably “crack” se­quest­ra­tion in the ne­go­ti­ations.

“There’s a lot of pres­sure in Con­gress to spend more,” he said. “The ad­min­is­tra­tion cer­tainly wants to spend more, and the pres­id­ent, of course, is in a key po­s­i­tion to de­term­ine wheth­er any of these bills, should he get them, be­come laws, so we’ll end up in the ne­go­ti­ation that I just de­scribed.”

But without en­ti­tle­ment cuts, Re­pub­lic­ans will be hard-pressed to go along with a sig­ni­fic­ant com­prom­ise, al­though policy riders—in­clud­ing one con­cern­ing wa­ter reg­u­la­tions un­der the En­vir­on­ment­al Pro­tec­tion Agency—could sweeten the deal.

Dyer, who worked in the Re­agan and George H.W. Bush ad­min­is­tra­tions, be­lieves that Con­gress could look to “ex­tend, modi­fy, tweak” the off­sets found in the 2013 bi­par­tis­an budget deal that provided bil­lions in se­quest­ra­tion re­lief.

“I think the only path out the door on Dec. 11 would be a cap ad­just­ment up­wards of an un­spe­cified num­ber with man­dat­ory spend­ing cuts to off­set it and something that would run two years in dur­a­tion,” said Dyer. “I also ex­pect that they might look at the Ry­an-Mur­ray off­sets—which every­body bought in­to wheth­er you liked them or not—and look at wheth­er or not you could ex­tend, modi­fy, tweak or do any­thing to them to get you ex­tra rev­en­ues.”

“That might be one pain­less av­en­ue to go down,” he ad­ded. “To be able to say to your crit­ics, ‘hey, we did this be­fore and you didn’t mind, now why can’t we do it again?’ Nobody died. Nobody got hurt.”

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.