WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama returned from vacation Sunday, ready for a busy fall that will include more battles over money to protect against the Zika virus, the entire federal budget and $400 million the administration paid Iran this year for the never-completed sale of military equipment.
Obama also is expected to campaign to help elect Democrat Hillary Clinton as president.
The president returned to the White House on Sunday after a 16-day getaway to Martha's Vineyard, Mass., with his wife, Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, and their dogs.
He will be at the White House for a little more than a day before his first order of business -- a Tuesday trip to Baton Rouge to survey damage from flooding.
Obama resisted pressure to interrupt his vacation to tour the ruins and meet with officials and flood victims. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump toured the ravaged area Friday with his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence.
Obama planned to spend the rest of the week in meetings, largely to prepare for an upcoming weeklong trip to Asia, his 11th and likely final visit to the region as president.
With Congress still on a seven-week break, Obama and his aides probably will focus on what the White House can get from lawmakers in September before they leave town again to campaign for re-election. Congress returns after Labor Day, and the House and Senate will have less than four weeks to pass a catch-all spending bill by the Sept. 30 end of the federal budget year.
Lawmakers plan to leave Washington again at the end of September, and they won't return until after the Nov. 8 elections.
The White House will continue to ask for money to help stop the mosquito-borne Zika virus from spreading and to develop a vaccine.
Obama asked Congress for $1.9 billion this year for Zika prevention. Republicans offered $1.1 billion and added provisions that Democrats objected to, including paying for the measure with cuts in Ebola funding and the Affordable Care Act.
Lawmakers have promised to keep pressing the administration over $400 million it delivered to Iran in January. Republicans say the money was ransom, paid to win freedom for four Americans who were being held in Iran.
The president and other officials denied any links between the money and the release of the four Americans. But administration officials also said it made little sense not to "retain maximum leverage," as State Department spokesman John Kirby put it last week, for the money he said was long owed to Iran, to ensure the U.S. citizens' release, given uncertainty about whether Iran would keep its promise to free them the day the money was to be delivered.
Iran had paid $400 million in the 1970s for U.S. military equipment, but the Iranian government was overthrown and the equipment wasn't delivered.
The explanations have failed to satisfy critics. Trump has begun telling supporters at his campaign rallies that Obama "openly and blatantly" lied about the prisoners. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Obama has set a "dangerous precedent" and owes the public a "full accounting of his actions."
After the Louisiana visit, the president will head to Nevada on Aug. 31 to discuss environmental protection at the Lake Tahoe Summit. He follows with the Sept. 2-9 trip to China and Laos.
A Section on 08/22/2016