| Get Jonathan Bernstein's newsletter every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Here comes the end of the congressional session, and it seems pretty clear that there's only one train going anywhere. The bill that is going to pass — that must pass to avoid a shutdown — is a temporary measure to fund the government beyond the current drop-dead date at the end of September. Both parties in both chambers have already agreed to a "clean" bill, which means that the legislation should contain nothing but continued funding at current levels to some date in December or February. Very simple, in theory. But since it's the last train leaving town, every member of Congress with a bill that he or she thinks needs to pass immediately wants to hitch it to this continuing resolution. This is how clean bills can get messy very quickly. So far, it appears that the bill with the best chance of producing a stalemate is one that would extend census operations. Democrats have been pushing that measure ever since the Census Bureau decided in July to cut short its count. But this is also an example of how not everything is partisan even in this era, because Democrats are joined by some Republicans, notably the entire Alaska delegation. Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan has a competitive contest for re-election, as does, in theory at least, Representative Don Young. How this will affect negotiations over the census measure is unclear — will anti-extension Republicans back off so that Sullivan can get a last-minute accomplishment to brag about? (Young is always said to be in trouble in good Democratic years. He always survives, and I strongly suspect he always will. You may recall that in "Logan's Run," there was a lone old man, played by Peter Ustinov, hanging out in the deserted wreckage of the Capitol. My theory is that this survivor of the apocalypse is actually Don Young.) Another complication is that certain health-care programs are scheduled to expire at the end of September. It wouldn't be surprising if one or more related provisions suddenly emerge as sticking points in negotiations. Again, if only one piece of legislation is going to pass before the election, a lot of lawmakers are going to argue that their pet cause is uncontroversial and totally urgent and so it too should be added in. Still, appropriators and party leaders have plenty of experience batting such things away. And the bottom line is, as one member of the House says, "there's no appetite on either side" for a shutdown. History shows that there's never an extended shutdown of more than a long weekend or so unless one side really wants it. So expect a few bumps on the road, but not a full-on shutdown. It's true that the pandemic bill appeared to revive itself on Tuesday. The bipartisan "problem solvers" caucus in the House put together a compromise plan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would keep the chamber in session until a stimulus passed, and President Donald Trump made happy sounds about a deal during an ABC News town hall. Even so, I'm pretty sure the bill is at least mostly dead, and may even be dead-parrot dead, which is the most dead anything can be. At least until after the election, and perhaps until the next Congress. Anything is possible, but at this point it looks like everyone is taking a turn at blame-ducking rather than making a serious effort to strike a deal. The story remains the same: Democrats think a major bill is needed, and Republicans don't. What's harder to guess is whether such a bill could get anywhere in the lame-duck session after the election. If Democrats are about to have a period of unified party government, then it would make sense for Republicans to cut deals on both a stimulus and funding for the rest of the fiscal year while they still have leverage. But that's exactly the kind of deal that Republicans have been reluctant to make in recent years — the party rejects compromise even if it is certain to produce a worse bill, from their perspective, later on. We're getting farther down the line of conjecture than I like to go, but I will say that this could yield a real disaster for Republicans, because I strongly suspect the one bill most likely to lead Democrats to eliminate the filibuster would be if doing so is the only way to pass a big fiscal stimulus during a major recession. And if there's unified Democratic government, there might be a whole lot of bills that wouldn't have had enough support to make eliminating the filibuster feasible but might well pass if they only need simple majorities in both chambers. 1. Rachel Bitcofer updates her presidential and Senate election forecasts. 2. Liz Hempowicz and Anne Tindall at the Monkey Cage on Congress's inherent contempt power. 3. Aaron Carroll lowers expectations about resolving the pandemic in 2021. 4. Fred Kaplan on the Middle East agreement. 5. Helen Branswell talks to Bill Gates about the federal response to the pandemic. 6. And Zach Montellaro has a great rundown of voting procedures in the most contested states, with a focus on how long it will take for each one to report returns. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You'll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. | 
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