As the White House struggles to contain the North Korean nuclear threat and the fallout from a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, that left three dead, Donald Trump is racing toward a legislative deadline that could upend the world economy. Congress must pass a new budget by September 30 to avoid a government shutdown, and it is also under pressure to approve a debt-ceiling hike that would allow the United States to continue paying its bills and forestall a potential financial crisis. The Trump administration has called for the “cleanest possible” increase tied to a continuing resolution to keep the government funded. But Republicans, who control both houses and the presidency for the first time in a decade, aren’t eager to let a potential crisis go to waste. “We just don't think that's the right approach,” one Freedom Caucus source told CBS News. “Why when we have Republicans in the House, the Senate and the White House are we doing what we criticized Democrats for doing for eight years, which is just clean raising of the debt ceiling without big structural reforms?”

Debt-ceiling showdowns were complicated enough in past years, when President Barack Obama frequently clashed with the G.O.P. over raising the government’s statutory borrowing limit. But the Trump White House has been uniquely inept when it comes to dealing with Congress or hitting any of the self-imposed arbitrary deadlines it set for itself on Obamacare repeal and tax reform. Both efforts have lurched along for months with little to show except for worsening relations between Trump and Republican leadership, which he has attacked in recent days as a “disgrace.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has said that “Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before, and, I think, had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the democratic process.” Trump’s “artificial deadlines,” he added, haven’t helped.

Trump may yet make matters worse. Politico reports that the White House is still debating spending levels for the budget, even as the president’s priorities are all over the place. Trump is likely to pan any budget that doesn’t allocate funding for the United States-Mexico border wall or immigration. At the same time, the White House is gearing up for another infrastructure push, holding a tax- reform event, and continuing to push senators to return to the negotiating table over health care. All four initiatives will likely run into difficulty with the House Freedom Caucus and other conservative coalitions that are agitating for a fight over spending cuts, linked to the debt ceiling, in a potentially disastrous replay of the Obamacare fight that divided the G.O.P. last month. “The stakes are very high in September,” Jenny Beth Martin, the leader of the Tea Party Patriots, a conservative grassroots organization, told Politico. There is a lot to do in a very short time.”

The West Wing is publicly hopeful that September will mark a turning point for the administration. Marc Short, the White House director of legislative affairs, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, and Gary Cohn, Trump’s economic adviser, are reportedly hoping to tackle the debt ceiling and the budget as quickly as possible, so as to move on to tax reform, where Trump could score a major win. “Our view is it’s all about tax reform,” Scott Reed, the chief strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview with Politico. “Success would help turn the page on all the drama of the White House so far.”