| Buckle up, folks. Congress is returning from summer recess with a massive to-do list and precious little time to do it. By the end of this month, lawmakers need to pass 12 spending bills — or a short-term stopgap — to keep the government funded. And the path there is filled with partisan land mines. Already, Republican hard-liners in the House are calling for significant spending cuts and threatening to tank Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s plan to approve the legislation on time. Climate-related provisions in the Defense Department’s annual policy bill are also stirring up trouble, including Republican-backed measures that would bar the Pentagon from implementing clean energy programs and a Democratic proposal to require contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions. Adding to the pressure: Billions of dollars for disaster relief are on the line, writes Manuel Quiñones. President Joe Biden has asked Congress for $16 billion to replenish the country’s disaster recovery coffers, which took a massive hit during this year’s onslaught of extreme weather — including last week’s landfall by Hurricane Idalia. As if that weren’t enough ... Congress also faces an Oct. 1 deadline to pass the 2023 farm bill. Lawmakers are divided on whether to make permanent the nearly $20 billion in new climate-related agriculture funds included in Biden’s climate law. In all, the farm bill could include more than $1 trillion in spending, the most ever. And early momentum to include green provisions in the spending bill for the Federal Aviation Administration has stalled. The House approved plans to streamline environmental reviews for airport construction over the summer. The Senate version omits the proposal, while including language to promote cleaner fuels. Conspicuously missing from the agenda: plans to overhaul the country’s process for permitting energy infrastructure projects. Once a major Senate priority, permitting appears to have taken a back seat for now. Democratic lawmakers are instead leaning on executive agencies to accelerate the incorporation of clean energy into the electric grid.
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