President Donald Trump admitted Wednesday morning that Congress may not be able to accomplish everything on the docket before the end of the year, Politico reports.
“We have many, many things that are on the plate,” Trump told reporters. “Hopefully we can solve them in a rational way, and maybe we won’t be able to. We’ll probably know pretty much at the end of this meeting — or the meetings that we’ll be having over a short period of time.”
The president and Vice President Mike Pence met Wednesday in the Oval Office with both Republican and Democratic leadership in Congress — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi — to discuss the best way to move forward with tax reform in the coming months.
Lawmakers face a full docket for September, with roughly three weeks to accomplish both must-pass legislation and other extraneous measures that need to be dealt with before the end of the month.
Congress has no choice but to pass a spending bill on or before Sept. 30 to fund the U.S. government. If it fails to do so by Oct. 1, portions of the government will be forced to shut down and all non-essential government employees will forgo payment until an agreement is met. If lawmakers pass a continuing resolution, which is the current plan, they will not have to make a decision until some agreed upon future date. During that period, spending levels would remain unchanged.
The debt ceiling also poses a significant problem to lawmakers. If Congress does not come to an agreement on the raising the debt ceiling, the U.S. Treasury will be unable to pay its liabilities in October, which has the potential to downgrade the U.S. credit rating.
House lawmakers almost unanimously approved a bill Wednesday to provide $7.85 billion in relief for the victims of Hurricane Harvey, which some expected to be a legislative road bump. The House will send the bill to the Senate, where lawmakers plan to attach it to a bill to raise the debt ceiling. Congress has its eyes on getting a Harvey relief bill to the president’s desk by the end of the week.
Another potential obstacle for Congress is the Trump administration’s decision to rescind former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Tuesday that the administration would formally rescind DACA. “I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama administration is being rescinded,” Sessions told reporters at the Department of Justice.
Trump said Wednesday that he hopes Congress can pass legislation for DACA recipients, but said he has “no second thoughts.”
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