Lawmakers returned to Washington on Monday after a week-long 4th of July break. Both chambers of Congress are far behind in their work for the year and appear to lack momentum toward completing contentious legislation, including immigration and pension reform, additional tax cuts, and budget process changes. This already nearly guarantees that a continuing resolution (CR) will be necessary for funding the federal government after the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, and that this Congress will then need to return after the November elections to wrap up essential legislation before the next Congress convenes. While Congress has usually waited until September to declare dead the chances of completing must-pass appropriations bills on time, rumors have circulated all year long about the need for continuing resolutions and a post-election lame duck session. These rumors could be due to the extremely short length of this legislative session - among the shortest in the modern history of Congress. Yet the shortened session aside, this Congress has been particularly inept at finishing what should be its top priority - appropriations bills. With just seven weeks left until the targeted adjournment for the year, the Senate has yet to pass one appropriations bill. In fact, the Senate appropriations committee has approved only half of its 12 bills for the year so far. The $31.7 billion Homeland Security appropriations bill is scheduled for floor debate in the Senate this week, and debate is expected to take at least a full week as Senators prepare a host of amendments to add funding for border, port, and rail security. The bill is already $715 million over the president's requested funding level and $1.5 billion more than the amount enacted for FY 2006. Republican leaders in the Senate hope to keep the focus on military and security spending for the rest of July by bringing the Defense and Military Construction appropriations bills to the floor later this month, following their approval in committee. While these bills are more likely to be completed before the start of the fiscal year, the outlook for the remaining appropriations bills is far less clear. If the Senate can complete those three defense-related spending bills by the end of July - no small feat - nine bills would still need to be finished in the Senate and then conferenced with the House, and there'd be just one month to do so. Moreover, those three bills are among the least controversial of the group. The Labor-HHS-Education bill - the only bill yet to be passed by the House - contains a divisive increase to the minimum wage to be phased in over the next two years and has encountered intense scrutiny by members of both chambers to the total amount of funding for the bill. The Transportation-Treasury bill has contentious provisions such as funding for Amtrak and a pending congressional pay raise and usually one of the most benign bills - the Legislative Branch bill, which appropriates funding for Congress - has run into opposition. Because of the limited time remaining in the legislative session, and conflicts and controversies over funding in many of the appropriations bills, the Senate may decide to add a continuing resolution to the Defense appropriations bill this month. This unusual step may be necessary to assure the passage of a CR in the divided political environment of an election year. Congress would then need to return after the November election to finish the appropriations bills before the CR runs out. This CR would, in all likelihood, under-fund government programs by continuing current funding levels without adjusting for inflation. It could also include an across-the-board cut in discretionary spending - a popular device touted as a fiscal control that in reality saves very little money. Regardless of the tactics used moving forward, the budgeting process of Congress is clearly on the verge of breakdown. With legislators spending so few days in session actually working, it's no wonder they cannot complete in a timely manner their most essential work: that of funding the government through appropriations.