Add risk of government shutdown to impeachment and other legislative logjams



https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/add-risk-of-government-shutdown-to-impeachment-and-other-legislative-logjams/2019/10/19/0b3ae5a0-f1e8-11e9-89eb-ec56cd414732_story.html

By
Paul Kane
Oct. 19, 2019 at 11:00 a.m. EDT

Congress is heading toward a multicar collision that could leave a lot of collateral damage if lawmakers aren’t careful.

So much of the current political oxygen is being sucked up by the House’s impeachment inquiry into President Trump’s actions related to his effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating his domestic political rivals. But the list of must-do items between now and year’s end is long and expansive, touching on every aspect of the federal government and beyond.

Chances for a government shutdown before Thanksgiving once seemed impossible but, with no progress reported on any of the 12 spending bills, the risk grows each week of a showdown that would be far more sweeping than the 35-day partial shutdown earlier this year. But many other laws are expiring or lapsing, from some foreign surveillance laws to the potential reinstatement of a very unpopular tax on medical devices.

The rational minds in Washington — yes, there still are quite a few — see each of these issues as separate and distinct from the House’s potential impeachment of Trump. But the president has increasingly demonstrated the past few weeks that he regularly sees issues as one large negotiation, linking together seemingly disconnected threads into one massive ball of legislative wax.