It’s a rare moment of unity in a historically divided and unproductive Congress. Hill aims to avoid shutdown drama

Congressional leaders from both parties are gearing up to pass a bill to avert a government shutdown with as little drama as possible.

With Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) facing a tough race, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) eager to gain more than a handful of seats in the House and early voting starting later this month in states represented by endangered Senate Democrats, virtually everyone is ready to get back home — quickly.


It’s a rare moment of unity in a historically divided and unproductive Congress.

“I think we’re going to be out of there on Sept. 23 for sure because they need to be out,” McConnell said in a recent interview. “I think the speaker would like to leave early as well. I think it’s finally something we can agree on on a bipartisan basis.”

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“Difficult to imagine,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said when asked about the likelihood of Congress staying past Sept. 23.

The House would like to be out even earlier: Representatives see Sept. 19 as their last day in session until Election Day.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be potential pitfalls.

The crisis in Iraq is forcing President Barack Obama to detail his strategy there, as he’ll do in a private meeting with Hill leaders on Tuesday and in an address to the nation Wednesday. Some Republicans want to take aggressive action to clamp down on the White House’s plan to act on immigration after the midterms. And the political climate will be as bitter as ever.

Senate Democrats are preparing to load up the calendar with politically charged bills, kicking off election season with a constitutional amendment proposed by Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.) to allow Congress and the states to more tightly regulate how campaigns are financed. Once that bill meets a certain death in the Senate, Democrats are looking at reviving other proposals — such as one to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour, another to let people more easily refinance their student loans and another to close the wage gap between men and women.

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Once they fail, Democrats will accuse the GOP of blocking bills to help women and the middle class — key constituencies that could help determine which party controls the Senate. But the GOP will say Senate Democrats are playing politics by teeing up bills that would do little to fix the country’s problems, even as House Republicans roll out their own messaging bills.

House Republicans will spend the month focusing almost exclusively on branding Senate Democrats as obstructionists. The House is attempting to pass two large bills, one containing a number of so-called jobs measures, the other one filled with energy proposals. Neither of them will even get a vote in the Senate — but that’s the point.

As the political theater takes shape, leaders in both parties are quietly laying the groundwork to get their must-pass business done. The House’s government funding bill, which would extend funding until Dec. 11, sources say, will be ready for public viewing by Tuesday. There’s serious talk about loading up the government-funding bills with multiple items, including an extension of an Internet tax moratorium and a renewal of the Export-Import Bank, an entity reviled by conservatives but strongly backed by the business community.

Inclusion of the Ex-Im Bank could produce a revolt among conservatives, forcing Boehner to rely on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to deliver Democratic votes to pass the spending bill. The bank, which provides loans and insurance to foreign companies purchasing U.S. products, is considered “corporate welfare” in the eyes of some conservatives.

“We’ve got a split conference on that issue,” said McConnell, who said he’d vote against extending the Ex-Im Bank charter.

There are other land mines as well. With the White House engaged in an escalating military conflict with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, Republicans — and some Democrats — are pushing the administration to fully lay out a strategy.

If the White House tells Congress it needs either an authorization for a larger military presence or more cash, lawmakers will be forced to reengage on a hugely contentious issue in the heat of an election year. Still, there’s no indication the White House will ask Congress to formally bless any proposal, given the likelihood that such a move could very well backfire.

How aggressively Republicans move to block any future action by the White House to stem deportations also remains an open question. Any effort to add restrictions to spending bills to block the president’s immigration move could produce a government shutdown fight, top officials in both parties say. But this year, a shutdown over immigration is not a clear-cut political winner for Democrats, top officials privately concede.

“It’s a question of surviving one day to the next at this point — and having nothing upset the balance,” the Democratic aide said.