Government shutdown looms as Congress returns with just three weeks to avoid it

WASHINGTON — After a six-week summer recess, lawmakers return to the Capitol on Monday facing a changed political landscape but a vexing, very familiar problem: figuring out how to avert a shutdown.

They have just three weeks to do so. Funding for the government runs out at the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, and former President Donald Trump is urging Republicans to force a shutdown unless certain demands are met. A shutdown would close federal agencies and national parks, while limiting public services and furloughing millions of workers just weeks before the election.

The presidential race looms over the final stretch for Congress; it is expected to leave again at the end of the month and return after Election Day. When the House left town for its summer break on July 25, President Joe Biden had just dropped out of the presidential race, Democrats were preparing to pick Vice President Kamala Harris as their new standard bearer, and Republicans were rushing to draw up a new playbook against Harris.

House Republicans have now settled on some lines of attack, which they'll highlight in politically charged GOP hearings and investigations into both Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on issues from border security to the Afghanistan withdrawal.

Here’s what to expect during Congress’ final three-week sprint before it returns to the campaign trail in October.

Another shutdown threat

The single biggest task for Congress is to fund the government by the Sept. 30 deadline. It’s a forgone conclusion that lawmakers will need a stopgap bill to keep the government open past the election — they are nowhere close to agreement on a full-year funding measure. But the details and length of the bill are a source of consternation.

Under pressure from Trump and right-wing members, the Republican-led House released a stopgap bill that would keep money flowing through March 28 and tie it to the SAVE Act, a GOP-led bill to overhaul voting laws nationwide by requiring proof of citizenship to vote. Democrats oppose the latter measure, noting that it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote, with hefty penalties that make the practice very rare. They also say it could deter Americans from voting, as many lack easy access to passports or birth certificates.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said House Republicans are “taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process.” But if the bill passes the House, it’s going nowhere in the Democratic-led Senate, and Johnson will have to decide whether to back off or hold firm, as the GOP risks being blamed for a shutdown as the party that instigated the standoff.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a joint statement Friday after the release of the bill.

Also expiring on Sept. 30 is the farm bill for agriculture programs, which has already been punted once and is expected to be extended on a stopgap basis with a continuing resolution.

House GOP probes

After spending much of the 118th Congress focused on investigating Biden, House Republicans are now shifting their focus to Democrats’ new presidential ticket.

The House Education Committee subpoenaed Walz last week for information about how his administration responded to a large pandemic fraud scheme in Minnesota. While the committee has been investigating this issue since 2022 and had previously requested information from the state Education Department, this subpoena was the first outreach to Walz himself.

The House Oversight Committee, meanwhile, launched an investigation last month into contact Walz has had with Chinese Communist Party entities and officials, dating to the early 1990s, when Walz was a teacher leading student groups on educational trips to China.

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Republicans are also focusing on the botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, which the Trump campaign has criticized Harris over. McCaul has threatened to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt unless he agrees to testify about Afghanistan on Sept. 19.

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House Republicans also have a full lineup of hearings this week focused on the “Biden-Harris administration.” There’s a Judiciary Committee hearing on “The Biden-Harris Border Crisis: Victim Perspectives.” An Energy and Commerce subcommittee is holding one called “From Gas to Groceries: Americans Pay the Price of the Biden-Harris Energy Agenda.” And the Veterans Affairs Committee has a hearing titled “Accountable or Absent?: Examining VA Leadership Under the Biden-Harris Administration.”

While the House committees conducting the impeachment investigation of Biden released a report in August saying that the president committed impeachable offenses, it’s unlikely the full House will attempt to vote to impeach the president given the GOP’s razor-thin majority and skepticism from some rank-and-file members. Johnson only thanked the committees and encouraged Americans to read the report in a statement at the time.

Democrats strike back

House Democrats have launched their own investigations into the GOP presidential nominee, Trump, though they lack subpoena power in the minority.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, and Rep. Robert Garcia, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the panel’s subcommittee for national security, the border and foreign affairs, sent a letter to Trump last week asking him to show proof he had never received any money from Egypt.

The top Democrats said they were probing a possible “$10 million cash bribe from Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi” to Trump’s 2016 campaign, after The Washington Post reported on Aug. 2 about a secret Justice Department probe into the alleged bribe; NBC News has not independently verified that report.

"Surely you would agree that the American people deserve to know whether a former president — and a current candidate for president— took an illegal campaign contribution from a brutal foreign dictator," the Democrats wrote.

The Trump campaign responded by calling the story "fake news."

In the Senate, Schumer has put members on notice that they will vote to confirm nominees and Biden-picked federal judges for the remainder of this year — including in the lame duck session after the election.