Lawmakers in Congress face weighty pile of unfinished business

WASHINGTON — Congress accomplished relatively little in a short work period, missing deadlines on the budget and on helping Puerto Rico with its financial crisis as lawmakers began a weeklong break.

Over the past month, the Senate finally passed a major energy bill — the first in nearly a decade — and made progress on providing help for Flint, Mich., which is grappling with a water contamination crisis.

[...] an effort to revive the process of passing more than $1 trillion worth of annual spending bills ran aground, while talks on a $1 billion-plus measure to fight Zika are looking less promising than previously hoped.

The government is expected to keep operating as usual, but economists warn that its access to capital markets will shut down and that eventually this will curtail public services if a debt-restructuring mechanism isn’t approved.

President Obama’s $1.9 billion request for emergency funding to combat the Zika virus, known to cause grave birth defects, has elicited a lukewarm response among Republicans controlling Congress.