Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., arrives at the Capitol as a consequential week begins for President Joe Biden's agenda and Democratic leaders in Congress who are trying to advance his $3.5 trillion "Build Back Better" package and pass legislation to avoid a federal shutdown, in Washington, Monday, Sept. 27, 2021. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The drama and deadlines driving action on Capitol Hill right now can be disorienting.

Democrats are trying to pass more than $4 trillion in infrastructure and social programs at the center of President Joe Biden’s agenda — and at the same time avert a government shutdown and prevent a federal default that could send financial markets crashing.

“The next few days will be a time of intensity,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote in a letter to colleagues over the weekend.

That might be an understatement.

Adding to the challenges for Democrats are their thin advantages in both chambers, the end of the fiscal year and intraparty disagreements over the size and scope of Biden’s signature social spending and climate legislation. Republican leaders have encouraged their members to reject almost all of it, leaving Democrats to go it alone.

Biden has been meeting with fellow Democrats as they navigate the political obstacle course.

“We’ve got three things to do: the debt ceiling, the continuing resolution and the two pieces of legislation,” Biden said Monday. “If we do that, the country’s going to be in great shape.”

Averting a government shutdown at midnight on Sept. 30 — the end of the fiscal year — has become an anxiety-inducing ritual in Washington. The current year is no different.

The House last week passed a measue to keep the government open and suspend the debt limit by a party-line vote of 220-211.

The Senate was to hold a procedural vote on that bill Monday evening, but Republicans were expected to block it after Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell said his members wouldn’t help raise the debt limit.

One possible path to avoiding a shutdown: Democrats could separate government funding from the debt limit.

McConnell says Republicans would support that.

The stopgap spending legislation includes bipartisan priorities, including $28.6 billion in disaster relief for Hurricane Ida and other extreme weather events and $6.3 billion to support Afghanistan evacuees after the end of the 20-year war.

Congress has a bit longer to resolve the debt limit issue, as the U.S. is not at risk of defaulting on its accumulated debt load of roughly $28 trillion for a few weeks.

But it is unclear, for now, how Democrats will get around Republican opposition.

The U.S. has never defaulted on its debts in the modern era, and historically both parties have voted to raise the limit. Democrats joined the then-Republican Senate majority in doing so several times during Donald Trump’s presidency, including a suspension of the debt limit that expired in August.

But now that Democrats have unified control of Washington, McConnell has ruled out returning the favor.

McConnell has blamed the proposed $3.5 trillion tax and spending bill and other Democratic priorities for the need to increase the debt limit.

But that formula has it backward.

Raising the debt limit is needed to make good on past — not future — spending decisions, including the Republicans’ $1.5 trillion, deficit-financed tax overhaul that Trump signed into law in 2017 and additional trillions in coronavirus relief that passed with GOP support.

The legislation passed so far by the House would cover borrowing authority through the end of 2022.