Congress returned from its long summer vacation Tuesday to an all-out, three-week sprint to avert a government shutdown – and no apparent plan yet to quell the conservative rebellion over Planned Parenthood that has dramatically increased the odds of a closure.

The mad dash – just 11 legislative work days left to solve the shutdown crisis, in between major votes on the Iran nuclear deal and the first-ever papal address to a joint session of Congress – presents a major test for Republican leaders in both chambers who vowed to end crisis-driven legislating.


The smart money is on Congress doing what it typically does when it’s up against a deadline: Find a short-term fix and delay the fight for later. But the dynamics are so fluid and passions high that no one truly knows how it will wind up on Sept. 30, the final day of the fiscal year and last day to extend funding or have the government close its doors.

Yet to be answered is how far Ted Cruz and other Republicans -- powered by conservative outrage over Planned Parenthood -- are willing to push Congress to the brink of a shutdown in order to defund the women’s health organization, despite resistance from Senate GOP leaders.

“I think there are other things we can do that will help us …continue to the investigations which are now in progress,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Tuesday. “I think we all know that we need to solve the problem, but we don’t need to shut down the government. That would be a mistake. That would set the pro-life cause back, in my view.”

Cruz, one of a handful of senators vying for the GOP presidential nomination in 2016, gave a preview of his strategy with a letter he began circulating last week. In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Cruz called on Senate leaders to stop any bill – including one that funds the government -- that sets aside any federal dollars for Planned Parenthood.

“The American people should no longer be forced to fund the abortion industry,” the letter, which Cruz’s aides are still circulating for signatures, reads. “Therefore we will oppose any government funding legislation that would authorize or provide federal funds for Planned Parenthood.”

GOP leaders, especially McConnell, are eager to avoid yet another government shutdown threat fueled by a partisan standoff over health care. The Kentucky Republican drew a firm line against using the must-pass appropriations bill to defund Planned Parenthood during a news conference before the August recess, and GOP leadership staffers in both chambers have begun discussions about how to tackle the funding conundrum, though there’s no real solution yet.

Much of the Republican leadership’s concern lies in the numbers. McConnell has tried to illustrate multiple times that he doesn’t have 60 votes to advance bills that strip Planned Parenthood of its federal funding in his chamber. A standalone bill to defund Planned Parenthood mustered 53 votes – seven short of the 60 needed to advance most bills in the Senate.

And the memories of the 2013 government shutdown over defunding Obamacare are still fresh in the minds of many Republicans.

“Many of us who were here in 2013 believe that the shutdown was a disaster for our country and have no desire to see that repeated,” Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a key Senate GOP moderate, said Tuesday. “There obviously are new members and quite a few new members who didn’t go through that learning experience but for those of us who did, I think it has an impact on how people approach the prospect of a shutdown.”

Top Republicans are also looking at poll numbers. An Aug. 31 Quinnipiac Poll found that 69 percent of Americans – including 53 percent of Republicans – oppose shuttering the government over a dispute over Planned Parenthood funding. Forty-one percent of those polled would direct their blame toward congressional Republicans, while 33 percent would fault President Barack Obama and Democratic lawmakers. Meanwhile, 17 percent would blame both parties equally.

All that has mattered little to conservatives.

“If Barack Obama and Harry Reid think it’s more important that Planned Parenthood, after what we know about them, gets taxpayer money, they think that’s more important than funding our troops, that’s a sad commentary on Obama and Reid,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a conservative leader in the House, told POLITICO in a recent interview.

But Congress is unlikely to make any headway on government funding until it knocks another major item off its to-do list: formally disapproving Obama’s deal with Iran aimed at curtailing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Any suspense over whether the Iran agreement will survive vanished when Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.) announced that she would back the accord, handing the Obama administration the crucial 34th vote. That means opponents of the nuclear deal won’t reach the two-thirds majority needed to override Obama’s expected veto of the congressional resolution meant to kill the Iran deal, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California has also indicated she has enough votes to protect the accord in her chamber.

And on Tuesday, Senate Democrats clinched enough support to allow them to block the disapproval resolution from reaching Obama’s desk in the first place. Three key Democratic holdouts – Gary Peters of Michigan, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Ron Wyden of Oregon – all announced Tuesday that they would back the nuclear deal.

Another Democrat, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, said Tuesday he would oppose the accord.

Over the weekend, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) offered to drop a filibuster and head straight to final passage of the disapproval resolution – as long as that required 60 votes, not the standard 51.

“Supporters and critics of the Iran nuclear agreement have always known that 60 votes would be necessary to advance any resolution in the Senate, since that is the review process established by the Iran Review Act,” Reid said. “As [McConnell] has stated many times, requiring 60 votes on matters of enormous importance is simply 'the way the Senate operates.'”

That would give cover to Democrats who are lining up behind the Iran deal but may be queasy about filibustering the disapproval measure. Unsurprisingly, that offer was almost immediately dismissed by Republicans, who are crying foul that Democrats are threatening to block the Iran measure on procedural grounds.

“The Senate voted 98-1 to have a final vote and we would certainly expect Democrats not to filibuster a vote that they said they wanted to take,” said Don Stewart, a McConnell spokesman. “Cloture votes and artificial limits for passage should not be necessary on a vote that 98 senators said they wanted to take.”

If Democrats do successfully filibuster the Iran disapproval bill, Republican leaders are talking about bringing up the resolution again to force Democrats to vote to block it a second time. But that all depends on whether Reid and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois can produce 41 votes for a filibuster in the first place.

Underscoring the significance of the floor debate, Senate Republican leaders have asked all committees to hold off on hearings, mark-ups and other activity to make sure all senators can participate. Meanwhile, the GOP-led House will begin debating the Iran bill on Wednesday; lawmakers there are set to pass the resolution of disapproval by Friday.

The Obama administration won another major vote in favor of the nuclear accord when Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, announced Sunday that she would vote in Congress to keep the deal intact. Even though she’s a top Democratic official, Wasserman Schultz had been torn between the administration and her Jewish roots, as well as a substantial Jewish population in her south Florida district.

"We have a concept of l'dor v'dor — from generation to generation,” an emotional Wasserman Schultz said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “There's nothing more important to me, as a Jew, than to ensure Israel's existence is there throughout our generations."