Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, told his Republican colleagues that they needed to vote on their health bill before the July 4 holiday — then he gave them an extension.

But don’t expect the health care debate to drag on forever. There are legal and political reasons that Republicans really do need to decide in the next few weeks whether their legislative effort will succeed or go back on the shelf.

The process could drag on past July, but there is tremendous pressure for Congress to act quickly.

Waiting imperils tax reform

Republicans chose to pass their health bill through a special budget process called reconciliation, which has a lot of rules. That choice has advantages — most important, it allows Republicans to avoid a filibuster and pass the legislation with 50 Senate votes (and a tiebreaking vote from Vice President Mike Pence), without any of the Democrats. But it also means that the health bill impedes other priorities.

Leaders want to use the same budget procedure to pass tax reform, but Senate rules allow only one such reconciliation maneuver at a time. That means that, as long as health care drags on, tax reform can’t move forward, unless Republicans can attract Democratic support under normal procedure (where 60 votes is needed for a filibuster-proof majority).