Erin Kelly

USAToday

WASHINGTON — Congress is poised to adjourn this week for a seven-week summer recess without passing legislation to fight the Zika virus, block suspected terrorists from buying guns, or even keep the government open past September.

The mass shooting at the Orlando gay nightclub in June and the growing public health threat of Zika have not been enough to overcome the partisan stalemate that has derailed most major legislation in Congress this year. In the House, reaching consensus on contentious issues such as gun control has been complicated even more by infighting among members of the Republican majority.

"Every single American should be disgusted by this, and every single member of Congress should be embarrassed," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Tuesday during the continued debate over Zika funding.

Top health officials fear Congress will leave without approving Zika funds

Lawmakers won’t return to the Capitol until Sept. 6, when they will have just four weeks to pass a stop-gap spending bill to keep the federal government open when the 2017 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had made it a top priority to pass the 12 annual spending bills that govern how federal agencies spend billions in taxpayer dollars. But that effort quickly fell apart amid partisan squabbling, leaving Congress to face a single stop-gap spending bill that must be passed at the last minute to avoid a government shutdown.

There is likely to be a battle in September over how long such a stop-gap spending bill should last. Lawmakers who serve on the appropriations committees that craft the spending bills want it to expire in December. That would give the current Congress a chance to pass a massive "omnibus" spending bill for 2017 and allow the next Congress to have a fresh start in January to work on 2018 bills. Conservatives want the stop-gap measure to last into March, after President Obama has left office and can no longer have any impact on spending.

Not surprisingly, Republicans and Democrats are blaming one another for running down the clock without taking action on high-profile issues.

After the June 12 shooting in Orlando that killed 49 club-goers and wounded more than 50 others, leaders of both political parties offered gun legislation, but no bipartisan consensus has been reached.

Democratic lawmakers in both chambers upended legislative proceedings and demanded votes on gun control legislation. In the Senate, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., led a nearly 15-hour filibuster and in the House, Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., led a sit-in on the House floor for 25 hours. Little has come of their efforts and the prospects for any gun legislation passing this year look bleak.

Senators deadlocked largely along partisan lines to block five gun measures, including proposals to expand background checks and ban gun sales to suspected terrorists. In the House, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., pledged to bring a bill to the floor that would ban gun sales to people on a government watch list of suspected terrorists. But he postponed the vote indefinitely after Democrats complained that it was too weak and some GOP conservatives charged that it would strip innocent people of their constitutional right to bear arms.

"We're not going to rush it," Ryan said at a recent news conference. "We're going to get it right. And that's what we're working on with our members."

Democrats disrupt House again over gun bills

The partisan battle over Zika funding has gone on since February, when the World Health Organization declared the mosquito-borne virus a public health emergency and Obama began calling on Congress to approve $1.9 billion for mosquito control efforts and vaccine development.

In May, the Senate approved a bipartisan bill to provide $1.1 billion to fight Zika. However, the House passed its own bill in June, cutting $750 million from other health programs to offset the cost.

Senate Democrats objected to the funding cuts in the House bill, as well as provisions that restricted funding for birth control services from Planned Parenthood, weakened clean water laws governing pesticides and blocked a ban on displaying the Confederate flag at military cemeteries.

On Tuesday, senators on both sides were still fighting over the issue, even as Congress was preparing to leave town at the peak of the summer mosquito season. Existing funds to combat Zika will run out in late July or early August, Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said.

"I certainly don’t know how Democrats plan to explain this to pregnant mothers," McConnell said Tuesday as he pushed for passage of the House-approved bill. "Either Democrats believe Zika is a crisis that requires immediate action, or they do not."

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and other Democrats said Republicans should pass the original, bipartisan Senate bill again and force the House to vote on that.

"I’m urging my Republican colleagues to do what they should have done months ago: push aside the extreme members of their party, drop the partisan politics on women’s health, and work with Democrats to send a serious Zika response bill to the president’s desk," Murray said.

Contributing: Donovan Slack