Time is running short for Congress to hammer out a federal spending plan for fiscal year 2018, which begins October 1. Members of the U.S. House of Representatives adjourned for their August recess (and the Senate is poised to follow suit ) following the defeat of the Republican effort to repeal the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Legislators will return in September with a few scant weeks to work on avoiding a government shutdown. With several spending bills already passed, a major sticking point in the negotiations is whether Congress will raise the debt ceiling. University of Pennsylvania political science professor Marc Meredith, Neil Buchanan, a professor at The George Washington University Law School, and Harry Stein, director of Fiscal Policy at the Center for American Progress, joined the Knowledge at Wharton radio show on  SiriusXM channel 111 to explain the federal budget process and the political maneuvering around it.…