Right now, the country’s business feels like background noise to a much bigger American story. But next week, after the RNC confetti is swept up and the balloon arches come down, life will start to return to semi-normalcy. People will have heard from a bandaged (and potentially changed) Donald Trump and maybe even start to reconcile what happened on that crowded stage in Pennsylvania. Congress, on the other hand, won’t have the luxury of self-reflection. They’ll be back at their desks, frantically trying to hammer through the work that stands in the way of them and a long August break.

For the House, it’s Groundhog Day — repeating what must feel like the same appropriations debates they’ve been having for the last two years. Four of the 12 bills are done and passed, but eight whoppers loom over the light at the end of the tunnel: summer recess. As Family Research Council President Tony Perkins pointed out on Monday’s “Washington Watch,” the last thing conservatives want is to be “jammed again with an omnibus lumping all of these together, because it’s an irresponsible way [to govern].” And an expensive one, as taxpayers have discovered these last several years.

Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.) insisted that the Republicans are “making very good progress.” Most of that is due to the new speaker, he says. “I think Mike Johnson was committed from the very beginning that we’re going to do this. I think he will continue to be committed to that. Of course, obviously, an omnibus did go under his watch, but he had just literally become speaker just a few weeks or months before that. … Now he has a chance to really organize it and orchestrate it. And he is doing just that.”

“You know, I’m a big fan of Mike Johnson,” the Alabama congressman wanted people to know. “He’s a great individual that, like you and [me], believes in those values of this country. And so, I look forward to working with him from this appropriation standpoint from the beginning, as opposed to rushing these altogether and spending just enormous amounts of money and not knowing what’s actually in the bills.”

Of course, it’s no small task to plod through eight appropriations budgets, as Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) explained to Perkins late last week. “House Republicans have been very clear about … avoiding this annual omnibus scenario. I think we’re up to it if we can join forces together and decide that the perfect is the enemy of the good — or even, in this case, sometimes the excellent.” Remember, he cautioned, “we have a very slim majority — three votes. … So I’m hoping that ultimately we get things done, but…” he paused, “Republicans are independent and sometimes that causes a challenge,” Walberg said in the nod to the GOP infighting earlier this year.

Part of that tension, most people agree, are the varying priorities of the caucus. “What is frustrating to me so many times is that a lot of my colleagues, they’re so focused on the money aspect of it. ... And again, I believe in cutting taxes, cutting money. But you can do all of that all day long, but if you don’t have the moral values of your country right, then it really doesn’t matter.” He’s talking about the moderate wing of the party, mostly from swing districts, who’ve put up a fight on longtime agreements over things like taxpayer-funded abortion or religious freedom. For years, these policy riders — like the Hyde Amendment — were non-controversial (and non-negotiable). Unfortunately, that’s all changed, and conservatives find themselves in the position of duking it out with their own party on what were once consensus issues.

“We talk about making America great again,” Perkins pointed out, “but to be great, we have to be morally good.” And that means these values of life, marriage, family, human sexuality matter. Turning to Aderholt, he praised the work he’d done making sure “that money is not given to these things that chip away at that moral foundation.” We’ve got to make sure, he continued, “that we don’t create a system where values [are] relegated to the lowest point of what Congress is considering.”

In the last omnibus, conservatives remember bitterly, a lot of the important victories that House conservatives won were stripped out in the Senate. How do Republicans make sure that outcome is different?

Honestly, Aderholt said, it all comes down to November. “I think a lot of it’s just going to depend on how the election goes. But I’m hopeful that we can keep anything that’s going to be detrimental at bay until Donald Trump gets in the White House in January.” The media is desperate for Americans to believe otherwise, but “there’s going to be a mandate that people want something different — and these issues [pro-life, pro-family] and all — are going to resonate … at the polls.”

“I know [there are] a lot of naysayers,” the Alabaman acknowledged. “But I can tell you … there may be various degrees of how people come down on the issues, but at the end of the day, I think we’re a pro-life nation.”