Next month could wind up being a very productive one for Congress, although since we are talking about Congress we have to include the standard disclaimer: "but of course there is no guarantee." But the fact that there are several deadlines looming may actually prod them into action. The big question is whether they can manage to walk and chew gum at the same time, since there is so much on their "to do" list and so little time to accomplish it all.

This is all in addition to all the other work Congress does, I should point out. The investigation into January 6th will likely make significant progress, as they have requested an enormous amount of records from multiple federal agencies and departments. They could also schedule hearings, both private and public. This may not even be the only congressional investigation to make news, as it is quite likely a new investigation into the end of the American military presence in Afghanistan will get underway as well.

There are also deadlines that won't explicitly force Congress to act, but may politically become imperative. The additional COVID-19 unemployment benefits will end the first week in September (they already have ended, in many Republican-controlled states), right in the midst of the fourth Delta-driven wave of the pandemic. Congress could act to extend these benefits, but at this point that outcome has to be seen as doubtful at best.

There are four big areas, however, that Congress needs to act upon next month. All have deadlines of one sort or another. So let's take a look at what will be on deck for Congress when it returns from its monthlong vacation.

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This was never going to be a good week for President Joe Biden. The ongoing crisis in Afghanistan pretty much guaranteed that. But although the week started out with signs of optimism -- more and more people being airlifted out of Kabul, to top 100,000 by week's end -- it ended in disaster. A suicide bomber exploded his vest right at the gate to the airport, which killed at least 13 American servicemembers and over 100 Afghans (as of this writing the official death toll for Afghans had hit 169). So while this week could have been perhaps tense but slightly optimistic, by week's end that was no longer possible. It was disastrous; there's just no other way to put it. One grim way to measure it is Biden has now made his first addition to the number he always carries around with him in his jacket pocket -- the number of fallen U.S. servicemembers from both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Of course, not all of it is Biden's fault, but all of it is definitely now his responsibility. We were attacked by the Afghanistan branch of the Islamic State ("ISIS-K"), many of whom were in prison but then either freed in the wave of 5,000 prisoners the Afghans had to let go when Donald Trump struck his deal with the Taliban (back when Trump thought inviting the Taliban to Camp David right around the anniversary of 9/11 was a good idea), or freed as the conquering Taliban emptied all the prisons as they took over. And there was also such a massive failure of intelligence that nobody apparently plotted out what the absolute worst-case scenario would look like (the Afghan government flees and collapses, the military refuses to fight and either deserts or surrenders en masse). So there's plenty of blame to go around. But Biden still bears all the responsibility, for it happening on his watch and under his orders. Which, to his credit, he has been acknowledging -- rather than the finger-pointing frenzy of denial that would have happened under the previous president. Biden keeps saying the buck stops with him, and he has acknowledged his own full responsibility for everything that has happened. He has stuck to his goal throughout -- he still insists we're leaving on the last day of this month -- and he also still insists history will judge this to be the correct move for him to have made.

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[Program Note: This column was prepared in advance, because I had prior commitments today which prevented me from writing a fresh column. I realize that it is a grim day for America with the news out of Kabul, so I would like to apologize in advance for running one of my frivolous "Silly Season" columns today. But it was this or nothing, so I decided to just add this disclaimer and go ahead and run it anyway. Fair warning: if you are looking for Afghanistan commentary today, please look elsewhere, as you won't find it here.]

Today we are going to set aside politics and Washington and all the rest of what I normally write about and instead do some pedantic navel-gazing. Yes, it is the dog days of summer, the tail end of the Silly Season, and so I felt it was time to do a column on grammar and style preferences.

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When future historians look back on President Joe Biden's legacy, one major part of it will be the end he has brought to American troops fighting in Afghanistan. Exactly how these future historians will deem it is still uncertain, at this point. It could go down as an absolute fiasco -- a textbook example of "how not to end a war." But if the rest of the airlift goes as smoothly as it seems to be running now, perhaps history's judges will be a little kinder to Biden. Again, this is still very much up in the air.

The White House is now claiming at least a limited amount of success for the airlift operation. What they have accomplished in a very short time is impressive indeed -- we are now airlifting out something like 20,000 people per day, which in and of itself is a logistical nightmare. These figures are updated constantly, and they now stand at over 80,000 people evacuated since August 14. That is indeed impressive, especially when you consider how slow the start of this process was. But will even 20,000 a day be enough?

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just pulled off a very big win. The House just voted (220-212) to advance the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill, which will allow both houses of Congress to begin hashing out the actual details and draft the language into a final bill. This was accomplished by cutting a deal with the Mod Squad -- the nine conservative House Democrats who balked at voting for the reconciliation bill before the final vote on the bipartisan infrastructure deal. In the end, Pelosi convinced them to do what they had sworn they wouldn't -- vote to move the reconciliation bill forward. To get them on board, Pelosi gave them an iron-clad promise to put the infrastructure bill up for a vote on September 27. Pelosi has always said she was going to schedule a vote on it "before October 1" (when transportation funding runs out, making it a hard deadline), so this wasn't all that big a concession for her to make.

Of course, there's still no guarantee Pelosi's "two-track" strategy will work, in the end. But she just moved a big step towards making it work. There are really only three important votes left in the process: the House infrastructure bill vote, and both houses passing the same version of a budget reconciliation bill. And since the infrastructure bill's clock is now ticking (with a hard deadline), it means the Senate and the House only have a little over a month to make the other two votes happen.

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I have to begin by clearly stating I did not personally come up with that new moniker on my own, but I am indeed going to start using it from this point on. I think I saw it first in a Politico article over the weekend, but I have to say as a snappy reference "Mod Squad" works on a number of different levels. First, baby boomer nostalgia. For those of you who are too young to remember, this was the name of a tragically-hip television show from way back. Second, it creates a nice counterbalance to "The Squad" (of progressive House Democrats). And third, it coins a new usage for "Mod," in this case a shortening of "moderate." All around, that's pretty good for a new political label, so my hat is indeed off to whomever came up with it.

Pedantic praise aside, though, the Mod Squad of nine conservative Democrats ("moderate" is a misnomer, really) is threatening to destroy any chances Democrats have of passing a huge swath of President Joe Biden's political agenda. Completely tanking any progress would almost certainly guarantee Republicans take back control of the House (and perhaps the Senate too) in next year's midterm election. So it would be partisan suicide to blow everything up. But the Mod Squad does not seem to care. This could be a rather large problem for all Democrats.

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This has been a rather historic week, so we are dispensing with our regular format to spend our entire column discussing the withdrawal of United States military forces from Afghanistan, and the emergency airlift operation now being undertaken to get every American and every interpreter and translator and other Afghan ally of ours out as well.

"Historic," of course, is a neutral term. It can be positive or negative -- it really just means "we will remember this time in the future for what just happened." To put this another way: Barack Obama winning the presidency was historic, but then the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in January was also historic, for very different reasons.

So we won't be presenting our usual awards or offering up our usual spin. Instead we're going to take a sober look at where we are now, how we got here, what mistakes were made, and how President Joe Biden has been handling it all so far.

We will return to our regular Friday Talking Points column format next week, we promise.

The Bitter End

Whether President Joe Biden wants it to or not, this week will go down in history filed right next to the week of April 30, 1975 -- the date Saigon fell. The photos of helicopters taking off from the roof of the Saigon embassy will be contrasted with the photos of people falling off a transport plane as it leaves the Kabul airport -- because they were so desperate to leave, they suicidally clung to the side of the plane as it taxied. The two will forever be linked, under the subject heading: "This is what it looks like when America loses a war."

Nobody likes to lose, Americans more than most. But lose we did. We expended an enormous amount of (as they used to say) "blood and treasure," and here at the end of the entire experience we really don't have a whole lot to show for it. When we arrived, the Taliban was in complete control. Before we're even completely gone, the Taliban is back in complete control. They swear they've changed, but no one in their right mind truly believes that.

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I haven't written about the progress of the pandemic data for a while, so I thought it was time to take a close look at the fourth wave. Mostly because one thing the Delta mutation of the COVID-19 virus has brought back (at least for me) is "doomscrolling" -- checking in on a daily basis to see what the numbers are and what the data show. It's not exactly a pleasant picture, but there are glimmers of hope here and there, at least.

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Although some very serious things are going on right now, this is supposed to be the political Silly Season, that long August period when Congress has left Washington and not much happens in the world of politics. Before Donald Trump's time, this was marked by the punditocracy deciding to focus their ravenous attention on some incredibly silly tempest in a teapot and blow it all completely out of proportion -- just because they had nothing better to write about and pontificate upon. Of course, Donald Trump's entire time in office was a 4-year Silly Season gone amok, so we really haven't had a "normal" Silly Season (if that isn't oxymoronic to say) since Barack Obama's time.

This year, of course, the Senate stuck around for a few more weeks than normal, and they were actually productive, so that gave plenty of early-August fodder to the ink-stained wretches who write about politics for their living. Right as Congress finally did depart, the Delta mutation of the COVID-19 virus exploded, which also gave everyone something real and serious to write about. This week, the fiasco in Afghanistan has put the spotlight on President Joe Biden and the White House, so this Silly Season has been anything but silly.

Even so, I always like to take a few days during this time to write silly columns. Call it a working vacation, if you will. And this year, I'd like to do something I don't believe this column has ever done, in all the years I've been writing -- I'd like to endorse a product.

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In my mail today, I received my ballot for the upcoming gubernatorial recall election here in California. But while plenty of pundits have been sounding alarms and all but tearing their hair out over the prospects that Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom could be out of a job in a matter of weeks, I am much more sanguine. The reason I am so calm is that the one poll which caused everyone to freak out was really a comparison of apples and oranges. I think Newsom will sail through the recall unscathed, in fact, winning by at least a 10-point margin. The entire exercise will be yet another example of "fiscally responsible" Republicans wasting a whole bunch of money for no apparent reason -- to the tune of the over $200 million that this recall is costing California taxpayers.

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