Congress Needs a Megadeal

As Congress returns to work this week, its agenda is crowded with must-pass legislation. To avoid shutting down the government, lawmakers will have to vote for new spending bills. To avoid a debt crisis, they will have to increase the debt limit. To avoid depriving millions of low-income children of health insurance, they will need to reauthorize funding for it. And since the Trump administration on its own seems unwilling to make the Obamacare health-insurance exchanges work more effectively, Congress will need to make some fixes.

All of this has to happen by the end of September. To further complicate matters, most of it will require some degree of bipartisanship. A megadeal in September, in which all these issues are handled together, may be the most likely path forward. But it will require the kind of deal-making that seems to have disappeared in a hyper-polarized Washington – so “most likely” is far from a sure thing.