House lawmakers leave DC until September with government shutdown deadline looming

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The House of Representatives is officially off to an early start for its summer recess – a five-week period when lawmakers are back home in their districts focusing on local issues and their own re-election bids.

They will return on Sept. 9 – exactly three weeks from the deadline to fund the government in the next fiscal year.

That means the GOP-run House will have to compromise with the Democrat-controlled Senate or risk a partial government shutdown, with some federal offices shuttered and potentially thousands of government employees furloughed.

It’s all but certain at this point that a short-term extension of the current year’s funding, known as a "continuing resolution" (CR), will be needed to avoid a partial shutdown.

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"I've always said we'd have to do a CR," House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., told reporters earlier this week. "And then whoever wins the election will make the decision. Do you want a deal by the end of the year, or do you want to kick them to the next Congress? I hope, my advice to whoever wins, would be do it by the end of the year."

House GOP leaders had laid out an ambitious plan to finish their 12 individual appropriations bills before the current recess, momentum that was derailed by intraparty disagreements about where