Congressionally induced uncertainty is back.

The announcement this morning that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R., Ohio) will resign from Congress at the end of next month complicates the difficult debates in Congress over how to keep the government open and raise the debt ceiling.

The government’s current funding expires on Sept. 30 and some members of Congress want to use the debate over the budget as leverage to strip federal government funding from the women’s health organization Planned Parenthood. As the leader of the House Republicans, Mr. Boehner was a key player in pushing to keep the government open, having made clear that he does not want to shut down the government again.

The political fallout from his resignation remains to be seen, but it’s safe to say that the uncertainty is back.

Congress has repeatedly struggled to reach clean agreements on key fiscal issues in recent years. In 2011 the Treasury came within days of running out of funds. This led to a downgrade of the U.S. triple-A credit rating from Standard & Poor’s. In October of 2013, the government shut down for over two weeks after Congress failed to reach an agreement on keeping it open.

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