It's a short but big week in Washington as Congress returns from two weeks of recess. The Senate convenes Monday afternoon and the House doesn't wander in until Tuesday, when they'll face a potential government shutdown at the end of the week. We've been here before, way too many times, but now there's an entirely new dynamic—a White House that is making the shutdown threats and throwing the process into total chaos as they keep throwing in new issues to muck things up.
Democrats have made their demands—funding for Obamacare's cost sharing repayments to keep the marketplace stable, permanent funding for retired coal miners' health benefits, and no border wall. Over the past few weeks, bipartisan negotiations on those issues have been stumbling along because those are actually all things House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would like to achieve, too. They're getting pressured on the Obamacare payments from the entire healthcare industry as well as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Settling the issue for coal miners is perhaps less urgent, but McConnell made a solemn promise to the coal miners of Kentucky that he'd take care of them this year. Passing wall funding isn't going to be easy in either chamber. So getting to agreement would probably not be as hard as previous confrontation when the demands coming from the House were Freedom Caucus-inspired and outlandish.
Now it's popular vote loser Trump's turn to make the outlandish demands, striving for something, anything to call an accomplishment in his first 100 days. He's throwing everything into the mix and making threats left and right to complicate the week. He's already tried to hold Obamacare payments hostage to border wall funding to make Democrats cave, a challenge Democrats laughed at, with the reminder that Trump promised Mexico would be paying for that wall. Plenty of Republicans remember that promise, too. Trump's latest tweet on the situation is not convincing anyone.
At the same time, you've got the White House trying to get Zombie Trumpcare 3.0 onto the floor this week, which is going over like a mashed potato sandwich with Republicans. Ryan has tried to throw cold water on that one, saying he's not going to have the vote. But with a Trump temper tantrum, who knows. And if all that wasn't enough:
President Trump may add tax reform to the Legislative Stew this week as well. Mr. Trump said on Friday that he would be announcing his tax reform plan on Wednesday—a declaration that reports indicated caught his staff somewhat by surprise. It's not expected that the White House will be sending a complete plan to the Congress with all the legislative text, but rather just the bullet points of what they want. As for Democrats, they say they will not give any votes to the GOP on tax reform, until they see the President’s tax returns—saying they want to know how any tax changes would impact Mr. Trump’s personal bottom line.
You might have thought with all this looming that Ryan and McConnell would have cut their last two weeks of vacation short, just to make sure there was ample time. But not these guys. Chances of a shutdown seem 50-50 at the moment. If a deal is worked out, it's likely to be very short term because this is just too much to grapple with in five days time. Unless Trump decides he wants to add a veto to his first 100 days accomplishments. It could happen.