CONGRESS/IMPEACHMENT/LEGISLATION/SPENDING/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “When virtually all legislative activity ground to a halt during the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999, senators had already resolved the most pressing item on their agenda: fully funding the government. But now, as the Senate reckons with the growing possibility of an impeachment trial of President Trump, lawmakers have yet to address 12 must-pass spending bills. None have reached the Senate floor, let alone the president’s desk. And the uncertainty of impeachment could further complicate the already fraught process of preventing another government shutdown, less than a year after the start of the last one, which devolved into the government’s longest lapse in funding…With just a handful of legislative days before the current short-term spending bill expires, lawmakers have begun to discuss extending that funding into early 2020 to avoid running out of money later this year if senators are mired in an impeachment trial with little time for legislative work.”
–Emily Cochrane, “Possible Impeachment Trial Could Complicate Congress’s Spending Debate,” The New York Times online, October 28, 2019