Last week, the House passed Sen. Ted Cruz's Obamacare defunding budget bill. It's what's called a continuing resolution, what Congress passes to keep the lights turned on in the federal government when it can't manage to pass actual appropriations bills for all the departments. This one lasts until December 15 and strips funding for Obamacare.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will file a motion to proceed to the bill in the Senate Monday afternoon, setting up a procedural vote on the House bill that will require 60 votes to pass. Reid has to file for cloture for the bill, and get his 60 votes, in order to limit amendments and control the amendment process. If he offered it under unanimous consent with a simple majority vote threshold, it would be subject to all sorts of crazy Republican amendments or substitution bills.
So just getting to that vote, which will take breaking a very likely filibuster from Cruz, could take 30 hours if Republicans insist on using up the entire amount of time allotted for "debate." (That's what they call those 30 hours, debate time, even though it rarely involves anyone standing on the floor presenting their arguments and counter-arguments.) So that puts this vote at Wednesday.
After that 30 hours, presuming Cruz's filibuster is broken (requiring seven Republican senators to vote to end debate), Reid plans to offer an amendment, with a simple majority vote, to strip the Obamacare defunding measure (Ted Cruz's fever dreams dashed) and send a clean continuing resolution back to the House. At the same time, he'll also file another motion to proceed on the underlying bill. That's will require another 30 hours to be eaten up, if Republicans insist upon it, before the final vote can be taken. That final vote, a simple majority, could take until Sunday, September 29.
That would give House Speaker John Boehner just one day to get his House shit in order and avoid a government shutdown. That would require his cutting the teabagger caucus loose, and working with Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to get Democratic votes.
Fun times.