I expect a two-ring (at least) circus this week on Capitol Hill as Congress confronts two years worth of budgets.

By law, the President is required to submit a budget for the next fiscal year–in this case the 2026 fiscal year that begins on October 1 2025–by the first Monday in February. Yes, tomorrow, February 3.

Maybe you remember, however, that Congress hasn’t passed a budget for fiscal 2025–the fiscal year that began on October 1, 2024. And that the government is operating under a continuing resolution (a CR) that expires on March 14. That is the second CR for fiscal 2025 and follows on a previous short-term funding measure that had extended government funding through December 20, 2024.

The law that requires a presidential budget by February 3 doesn’t provide any penalties for missing the deadline. So don’t worry that some other financial catastrophe is about to flood out of Washington. Missing the deadline, which the Trump Administration looks almost certain to do, is mostly symbolic, a reminder of just how dysfunctional the Congressional budget process has become.

On a practical level, the Republican-controlled Congress has a bigger problem on its mind: how to get enough votes to pass some measure to fund the continuing operation of the Federal government past the March 14 deadline once Congrss resumes on Tuesday. Without having to buy Democratic votes by including any of that party’s spending priorities.

Republican leaders of the House and Senate came back from the party’s conference at the Trump Doral golf course with a plan to push forward with either one big bill in the House or maybe two bills in the Senate that will not require substantial spending reductions because party leaders have decided to use “magic math” to claim that renewing the Trump 2017 tax cuts really won’t cost the $5.5 trillion over 10 years that the Congressional Budget Office has calculated. Instead, the plan will claim the tax cuts will cost nothing for budgeting purposes because they simply continue current policy.

There are some spending cuts–amounting to $315 billion over 10 years in the package. But those are more than offset by $325 billion in increased spending on the Trump Administration’s plans for national security and mass deportations.

The question, of course is whether the Republicans with their thin majorities in the House and the Senate can pass such a package.

I see two challenges.

First, some Republicans in Congress will attempt to load the spending bill with policy changes that will not only make the bill more poisonous to Democrats but could strip away crucial Republican votes too. I expect that the Senate Parliamentarian will throw out most of these policy attempts because under the Senate’s Byrd Rule only provisions that change revenue are allowed in a CR. Still some could make it into the final CR. Which won’t make passing it any easier.

Second, and I think this is the bigger threat to passing a CR, some Republican conservatives will find the lack of spending cuts in the bill hard to swallow. Exactly how many budget hawks will be willing to buck President Trump and die on their deficit swords is an open question. Trump’s usual threat to primary any Republican who opposes him is less chilling in this case since most of these conservatives come from districts so safe that a primary threat isn’t credible.

Investors and the bond market will be watching.

And in the background the debt ceiling battles looms. Treasury is already into using what it calls “extraordinary measures” to prevent the government’s debt from breaching the limit. Janet Yellen, the Biden Administration Treasury Secretary, had estimated those extraordinary measures could get the government to June or July.

Isn’t this all fun? Who said Washington was boring?