Erin Kelly

USAToday

WASHINGTON — Congress returns Tuesday from a seven-week recess that has left lawmakers with less than a month to fund the federal government and prevent a shutdown. But the scramble to solve that problem will not stop Republicans from casting votes on other issues designed to register their opposition to the Obama administration.

Federal agencies ranging from the National Park Service to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention could face closures unless lawmakers vote on a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government running past the end of September.

Lawmakers also will confront a pressing problem they left behind in July: How to pay for efforts to combat the Zika virus, which is now being transmitted by mosquitoes in Florida, has been linked to the death of an infant in Texas, and has been declared a public health emergency in Puerto Rico.

Republicans and Democrats have spent their recess blaming each other for the failure to agree on a funding bill, but a USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll released Monday showed strong public support for new Zika finding. By a margin of 62%-19%, poll respondents said Congress should approve additional funding, rather than continue to divert funds from other programs.

Poll: Amid Zika fears, support for funding

"As the Zika disease spreads, Congress is eventually going to have to come to terms with it and stop politicizing the issue," said Donald Wolfensberger, a congressional expert at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a non-partisan research institution.

Meanwhile, in the House, Republicans are planing votes on several "message bills" that are almost certain to go nowhere. The House is expected to vote on whether to impeach IRS Commissioner John Koskinen over Republican allegations that he obstructed a congressional investigation into whether the IRS improperly scrutinized Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. Democrats and the Treasury Department have called the allegations baseless, and the Senate is unlikely to vote on the matter.

Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is also promising a vote on some kind of legislation to register GOP opposition to a $400 million cash delivery to Iran made by the Obama administration in January. President Obama said the money was an overdue repayment to Iran of assets frozen decades ago, and there was no connection to American prisoner released by Iran the same day the payment arrived. The State Department later admitted that the payment was used as "leverage" to assure the prisoners' release.

It is not clear what form this legislation will take.

Other major issues are unlikely to see significant progress before Congress departs for the elections in October.

The Republican-led Congress is expected to continue blocking a vote on Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, who was nominated by President Obama after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia six months ago. And no vote is expected on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, although some supporters still hold out hope of action during the lame-duck session after the election.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Monday that Congress has not done enough to address issues such as opioid abuse, the tainted water system of Flint, Mich., and gun violence. "There is so much unfinished business that directly affects the lives of the American people," she said on CBS This Morning. "That’s what we have to get on with.”

After September, the House and Senate will adjourn for October and part of November, leaving only a handful of weeks after the Nov. 8 election for lawmakers to finish any work and adjourn by their target date of Dec. 16. A new Congress will be seated in January.

"At this point, I think Congress is just trying to do the minimal amount needed to keep the government open and then get out of town without looking too bad," Wolfensberger said.

Congressional leaders' immediate focus will be preventing a government shutdown, a prospect created by lawmakers' failure to pass the 12 annual spending bills that tell federal agencies how to spend billions in taxpayer dollars. Partisan squabbling derailed those bills, giving Congress little choice but to pass a short-term spending measure to keep federal agencies running until lawmakers — and the White House — can reach a deal on longer-term legislation.

Members of the rebellious House Freedom Caucus want any funding fix to last into March so that the new Congress and new president will set spending priorities. But members of the House Appropriations Committee, which has jurisdiction over discretionary spending, argue that the current Congress should finish its job. They want a stop-gap funding bill to expire in December to force lawmakers to resolve the issue this year.

Josh Huder, a senior fellow at the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University, said it's possible that lawmakers may try to deal with Zika by adding funding to combat the virus to whatever deal they reach to keep the government open.

"There definitely are senators who are feeling a lot of pressure to do this, particularly in the South, and (Senate Majority Leader) Mitch McConnell wants to help (Florida Senator) Marco Rubio get re-elected so that Republicans have a better chance to keep their Senate majority," Huder said. "The question is whether the House will go along with any deal the Senate reaches."

Ryan and other House leaders may be forced to turn to Democrats for help to keep the government funded if the Freedom Caucus won't go along with a short-term fix, he said.

"If the Freedom Caucus won't compromise on either the length of the funding or the amount, then they're going to force House leaders' hands to work with Democrats to get this done," Huder said. "The only alternative for House leaders is a shutdown, which they see as an absolute catastrophe. Just keeping the government open is a very big lift. It's hard to imagine a scenario where they do more than that."

Congress may leave town without acting on guns, Zika or spending bills

Conservatives want to force House vote to impeach IRS chief