It's a very short week for Congress, starting late Monday afternoon and ending midday Thursday before a 10-day Memorial Day recess. Nevertheless, legislators are all going to pretend like they're working hard by having meetings to talk about how they'll do stuff in the coming weeks.
It starts with congressional leadership, the "Big Four" of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy getting together Tuesday morning to talk about a budget deal, one that might include raising the debt ceiling. Unless Congress can come up with a budget, automatic cuts will kick in under the Budget Control Act: $55 billion from domestic spending and $71 billion from defense.
Those massive cuts to defense have brought Trump to the table, who had initially been fighting McConnell on trying to negotiate a budget. That hurdle has been crossed, but now it will come down to an actual agreement, one that will garner Trump’s buy-in. To that end, Pelosi and Schumer will be meeting with Trump on Wednesday. They'll use infrastructure as their sweetener (it's always infrastructure week in D.C.) to try to find a deal on lifting the budget caps.
Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney is going to be leading the negotiating effort for real, which might make all of Pelosi's and Schumer's efforts with Trump futile. Between Mulvaney’s nihilism and Trump's belligerent whims, it's promising to be a difficult summer for everyone.