Wall Street could take its cues this week from Washington, which is in the throes of a heated debate over spending on infrastructure, health care and education with the deadline to keep funding the US government just days away.

What’s happening: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is working to rally Democrats behind a $1 trillion infrastructure plan and a broader $3.5 trillion social and environmental package, all while Congress tries to avert a government shutdown. Pelosi said Sunday night that the House will vote on infrastructure later this week — not Monday, as she’d originally intended. That gives her a bit longer to try to corral votes. “It’s going to take the better part of the week, I think,” President Joe Biden predicted Sunday. But it’s not the only issue requiring lawmakers’ immediate attention.

Tick tock: Funding for the federal government is set to expire at midnight Friday. Unless Congress acts soon, there could be a partial shutdown, where certain public services are halted. The Senate is set to hold a procedural vote Monday on legislation that would keep the government open through Dec. 3, while shelving the country’s debt limit until the end of 2022. It’s expected to fail. The debt limit, which the government could hit in mid-October, is the biggest risk to investors. If it’s not raised shortly, the country would experience an unprecedented and disastrous default. A mild recession, according to analysts, would likely be the best-case scenario if the US government isn’t able to pay its bills for the first time ever.

Should the Treasury default and the impasse drag on, the federal government would have to enact “devastating” spending cuts that would cause a “cataclysmic” situation for the economy, Moody’s Analytics warned last week. The research group estimated that nearly 6 million jobs would be lost, the unemployment rate would spike back to nearly 9% and stock prices would plummet by one-third, wiping out about $15 trillion in household wealth. Concerns are already building about the state of the US recovery as the Delta variant takes a toll. The latest survey of economists from the National Association for Business Economics, released Monday, showed that respondents have tempered their optimism. The median forecast is now for 5.6% economic growth this year, compared to 6.7% in May.