If you’re wondering how crazy Congress will be these next two weeks, the most quotable member of the Senate GOP quipped that it would be busier than “happy hour at an airport Chili’s.” And Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) isn’t wrong. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) aren’t just mourning the shocking loss of Senator Lindsey Graham, they’re also staring down an avalanche of deadlines — any one of which could be fatal for their party to miss.

The loss of Graham also presents a very real numerical challenge for Republicans, who were already dealing with the mysterious medical absence of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Now, with the former majority leader sidelined, the GOP finds itself in an unusual situation. Without the Kentuckian or Graham, Republicans are suddenly in the minority on the Appropriations Committee at 13 to the Democrats’ 14 in a very critical budget cycle. While Thune will rush to fill the void, a tie on one of the most consequential bodies in the Senate doesn’t exactly bode well as Washington careens into the end of the fiscal year.

The speaker, who’s dealing with equally daunting margins, can sympathize. The difference is, he has to manage quadruple the personalities — and the president’s often impossible expectations — to get tough pieces of the GOP agenda through a disgruntled caucus. And with time ticking down to a recess that neither side will sacrifice, the pressure cooker on both sides of the Capitol is ramping up.

Thanks to a conservative temper tantrum that cost the House crucial time before the Fourth, there are just 24 legislative days on the chamber’s calendar until the election — and a mere eight until the August break. In that small window, the list of landmines is gargantuan.

National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and Iran Funding

As WTOP reporter Mitchell Miller put it, the annual must-pass military bill “is stuck in suspended animation right now.” That’s largely the fault of a handful of Republicans, who staged a coup before the July 4 recess to stop leadership from merging the NDAA with the election integrity legislation, the SAVE America Act. Johnson was five yards from the end zone when some hardline Republicans walked off the field, refusing to pass the troop bill and forcing the speaker to send everyone home.

“You would think the NDAA at this point would have moved forward more than it has, but of course, right before they left, the House had that whole car crash, if you will, politically related to the NDAA and the SAVE Act,” Miller pointed out. “… [T]he effort by House Speaker Mike Johnson to merge those didn’t go over well with the conservative wing of the party,” he noted in the understatement of the month.

Then, of course, there’s the White House push for more money for the Iran war, which fall under the category of supplemental dollars, giving a lot of fiscal conservatives heartburn. At a not-cheap price tag of $67 billion — and with plenty of hesitation over a long-term conflict in the Middle East on both sides — “there’s really a lot of nervousness and concern among lawmakers,” Miller warns. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has been meeting with Republicans, hoping to persuade them of the importance of the supplemental package. “But there’s still a lot of skepticism, even among Republicans who support the president, about whether or not this money is going to get approved because they really just don’t know what’s happening with Iran, and that’s just a big question mark right now.”

The unease over the situation in the Middle East is also spilling over onto the NDAA, now that the ceasefire is dead. Democrats, who were already furious that Trump didn’t ask for congressional approval for the war, are taking their frustrations about the renewed fighting out on the legislation — threatening to vote it down. “The Senate cannot authorize $1.14 trillion in defense spending — the largest defense budget ever proposed in our nation’s history — for Donald Trump to continue his illegal and disastrous war that Americans do not want,” Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Wash.) said Tuesday before Democrats tanked the first procedural vote in Thune’s chamber, a foreboding sign for the must-pass bill.

Reconciliation 3.0 with a Side of Election Integrity

Despite the sour way Republicans parted two weeks ago, Johnson is still optimistic that he can get a budget resolution moving by Thursday that would bypass the Senate’s 60-vote threshold. In a House GOP Conference meeting Tuesday morning, the longsuffering Louisianan asked his disgruntled party to “be patient.” No one is quite sure what will make the cut for the package after weeks of batting around ideas ranging from fraud prevention and election reforms to Pentagon spending. “The devil’s in the details,” Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) shrugged. “And I don’t think those details are worked out yet.”

That will have to change if Johnson expects to deliver the proposal to the House floor in the next handful of days. “We’ve gotta pay for everything,” insisted Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who is on the Budget Committee, highlighting a key flashpoint in the debate. Conservatives will undoubtedly want to cut dollars if new ones are spent. The question is: where?

In the meantime, the biggest puzzle will be figuring out how the SAVE America Act fits into reconciliation. If the House decides not to attach the legislation to an appropriations bill like the NDAA, reconciliation is the last train leaving the station. As the speaker told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Saturday’s “This Week on Capitol Hill,” “The president’s number one priority is the SAVE America Act. It is mine as well. It is the House Republicans’ top priority. And I want to remind everybody we’ve passed it three times already,” he underscored. “Remember, the [bill] only has two components in its final form. Right now, it’s proof of citizenship to register to vote and [a] photo ID when you show up. Those are 90-10% public opinion polling issues,” he noted. “Even 72% of Democrats say they understand the necessity of photo ID to vote. But you can’t get a single Democrat in the House or Senate to vote for it.”

“I know we sound like a broken record,” he told Perkins, “[but] the best way for us to do that is to put it on a reconciliation bill, send it to the Senate in an irresistible package, and pass it with Senate Republican votes only, sadly, and get it to the president’s desk. That’s what we’re aiming to do.”

On the Senate side, Republicans are less upbeat. Without Graham, who was the driver of the other reconciliation pushes, there’s understandable concern that no one will be able to fill those shoes. “The direction that we had been heading was very … difficult anyway,” Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) conceded. “This just makes it more difficult,” she lamented. Then, of course, there’s the concern that elements of the SAVE America Act, regardless of how cleverly they’re inserted, won’t pass the parliamentarian’s muster. “The plain text of the bill can’t fit in the fast-track budget legislation due to the Senate’s arcane reconciliation rules,” Punchbowl News stresses. “Johnson is considering three options for inclusion, including a $4 billion grant program aimed at incentivizing states to check ID and citizenship of voters.” Still, Thune stopped short of a full-throated endorsement. If the House “design[s] it right and scale[s] it right, there may be a path there,” he said.

Others, like Grothman, believe the president’s influence will get the legislation over the finish line. “I don’t think we’ve ever had somebody as potentially powerful as Donald Trump driving to get it done,” he told Perkins on Monday’s “Washington Watch.”

Appropriations Bills and Shutdown Threats

In one of the most underappreciated accomplishments of Johnson’s tenure, the House has broken the curse of the continuing resolution and returned Congress to regular order — where the agencies’ budgets are written, introduced, debated, and passed the way the Founders intended. The speaker is proud of this triumph (as he should be), telling Perkins, “We have demonstrated every day, over and over and over, Republicans are doing the work; we are getting the job done. We are back to regular order. We are moving separate appropriations bills, as the process is supposed to work.”

All 12 of the appropriations bills have passed out of their House committees, and two have moved on to the Senate. Before the July 4 holiday, Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) celebrated running the table on those budgets, commenting, “No matter the challenges, shutdown tactics to veer the process off course, or long mark-up hours before us, we will never stop working line by line — and in good faith — to uphold our constitutional duty. Reporting all 12 of our FY27 bills out of full committee is proof that regular order still works when Congress commits itself to the task,” he said. “Our dedicated cardinals and members have engaged, deliberated, and delivered on behalf of their constituents and the nation. They’ve balanced priorities, exercised careful stewardship, and advanced legislation that strengthens U.S. security, prosperity, and future. I am extremely proud of these America First bills. … Each measure reflects effective legislating and leaves omnibuses where they belong: in the ash heap of history.”

It’s Johnson’s personal goal to move the remaining 10 spending bills to the Senate before the September 30 deadline, but he’s clear-eyed about what Democrats might do to sabotage them. “[They’re] dug in. They do not want to help President Trump do anything. And I think that they’re planning to shut the government down at the end of the fiscal year” — a fact that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) confirmed in a Dear Colleague letter this week.

Citing the Iran war, the Democratic leader claims that the GOP is “refusing to negotiate on the President’s bloated, partisan topline budget request” for defense. “Eleven weeks remain,” he wrote. “Time enough for Republicans to abandon my-way-or-the-highway budgeting and begin the serious bipartisan negotiations required to fund the government responsibly.”

The Left’s strategy, which only leads to nationwide exasperation, will be tough to sell to voters who are sick and tired of Schumer’s team pulling the rip cord every time they want to make a political point. “Their calculus would be that somehow this would be blamed on the party in power,” Johnson predicted. “When it’s the Democrats who are obstructing all this. So if it comes to that scenario, of course, we’ll try to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open. But if Democrats are standing there holding up the paychecks of Americans and holding up the federal government and causing long lines at TSA again and all that nonsense, there will only be one party to blame — because we will be able to show [that we did our part]. The record is very clear on all this.”