The House of Representatives returns next week to Washington, and a budget fight showdown is expected. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Congress is tasked with having the fiscal 2025 budget ready to go by then, but it’s all but guaranteed it won’t be. 

“What usually happens at this time is, we’ll get to the September 30th deadline, and we’ve seen this happen for years, regardless of who’s running the show, but we’ll kick the can down the road maybe a few weeks,” Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, explains. 

The “can,” in this case, is the fiscal 2025 budget blueprint, and the “kick” is a continuing resolution that funds the government, usually for several weeks or months at a time.  

It has become the habit of Congress a day or two before Christmas to “have this massive Christmas tree of an omnibus bill that gets passed that few people have read [because it’s] thousands of pages long, [includes] gobs amount of money, and doesn’t really do the American people the service that they deserve from their Congress,” Cloud says. 

The Texas congressman says he’s doing everything he can to return the nation to fiscally responsible spending, noting that members of his own party are also partly responsible for the out-of-control spending in Washington. 

“With the Left in charge, they raced toward this fiscal cliff, and Republicans, when we’ve been in charge, we jog toward that same cliff and call that progress,” Cloud laments. “I’m not willing to settle for something that doesn’t put us on the right path going forward.” 

Cloud joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss how Congress can take significant steps toward balancing the U.S. federal budget, and how the election could affect the financial fight in Congress this fall. 

Listen to the podcast below: