Congressional Republicans Lay Groundwork for a Summer of Inaction

As Congressional Republicans push towards a vote on their cruel Senate Trumpcare bill next week, they still have yet to meet their most basic responsibility: passing a budget. Even with Republicans in control of the House, the Senate and the White House, Republicans still have not put forward a single piece of legislation to create good-paying jobs or raise the wages of hard-working Americans.

With the nonexistent, elusive GOP budget deal, we do know one thing: whatever Republicans come up with will inevitably stack the deck further against working families to benefit big corporations and the wealthy.

AP: Battles over health care, budget await Congress' return

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., told reporters Friday that he'd "prefer" to pass the budget in July, suggesting it might linger until fall, adding to Congress' late-year mountain of work.

AJC: Not just health care – GOP struggles on basic budget outline

Overshadowed by the ongoing legislative machinations involving GOP efforts to overhaul the Obama health law, Republicans in Congress are also struggling to approve a budget blueprint for 2018, a document that not only sets the table for next year's spending bills, but which would also authorize use of expedited procedures for a major tax reform bill backed by President Donald Trump.

Roll Call: Budget Battle Opening Salvo Still Stalled

House Republicans have spent a month arguing over key pieces of a budget resolution that faces little chance of passage in the Senate. But they are focused less on the endgame than staking out their own position.

House members frequently view legislation they have passed as a marker for their position heading into bicameral negotiations … The utility of setting a marker has been slightly undermined by the House's struggles to agree on such an opening negotiating position.

But for other members, the marker approach just raises false expectations, setting up members and their constituents for disappointment in the endgame.

POLITICO: Appropriators leave budget writers behind

NO MORE WAITING: House appropriators are officially leapfrogging the GOP's budget writers.

The House Budget Committee is entering the crucial three-week stretch before August recess without a solid path to releasing its much-belated resolution … This is just the latest break from precedent in this year's Tetris-like budget cycle, where the House's budget and appropriations work is awkwardly overlapping as they try to beat the clock.

Real Clear Politics: Congress' Summer of Fiscal Woe

Members of Congress returned from the Fourth of July recess this week facing a series of challenging fiscal issues with looming deadlines and no agreed-upon plan to avoid potentially disastrous outcomes.

Republicans' decisions over the next several months could come to define their ability to govern and have significant implications for their electoral future—not to mention the fiscal health of the nation. A government shutdown would likely be blamed on GOP dysfunction since the party controls Congress and the White House, and failure to pass a budget would jolt Republicans' chances for tax reform, a key agenda item.

Republicans have created the uncertainty themselves. The appropriations process is moving on a shortened timeline because GOP lawmakers decided in December, at the request of the incoming Trump administration, to delay completing last year's appropriations process until the new president took office. The upshot was that funding for this year only passed Congress in May, eight months behind schedule.

It's simply not enough to ‘prefer' passing a budget in July. With three weeks left before the August recess, President Trump and Republicans in Congress must work with Democrats to put forward a real agenda that creates good-paying jobs for hard-working Americans everywhere.