And get ready for a wild Lame Duck session
After Democrats lost the House in 2010, Congress passed a slew of major legislation before Democrats ceded the chamber to Republicans: a bipartisan tax deal, a bill aiding 9/11 first responders and legislation repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell.”
The agenda as lawmakers return to Washington after the Thanksgiving break is almost as ambitious.
But Congress also needs to pass more routine legislation in coming months, which could consume enough time and energy to keep Democrats from taking up other priorities during their final months in control of the House.
Lawmakers’ most important task is to pass a spending bill — either an omnibus or a continuing resolution — to keep the government running. This would be the last such bill hashed out in part by retiring Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), both of whom are veteran appropriators.
President Biden has also asked for nearly $40 billion in aid for Ukraine and $9 billion worth of covid funding. The Ukraine aid is a priority for most lawmakers, but Republicans have been opposed to coughing up more coronavirus aid money and have blocked it for months.
Congress also needs to pass the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual military funding bill that has been passed every year for more than six decades. Lawmakers are way behind this year. The Senate hasn’t voted on its version of the bill yet, and the conference committee tends to be a lengthy process.
But Democrats (and some Republicans) are also eyeing more ambitious targets in the four-week lame-duck session. Here’s a look at what could happen:
Protecting same-sex marriage rights: This is the easiest lift. The Senate voted 62 to 37 before heading home for Thanksgiving to advance legislation to codify the right to same-sex marriage, months after Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization suggested it could be at risk. The chamber is expected to pass it this week, sending it back to the House and then to Biden’s desk.
Revising the Electoral Count Act: Nearly 40 senators — including 16 Republicans — have signed on to a bill introduced in July by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) to revise the Electoral Count Act, the 1887 law whose ambiguities Donald Trump tried to exploit to overturn the 2020 election results. In theory, that should give the measure enough support to overcome a Republican filibuster. In practice, the Senate is running out of time.
The House also passed its own version of the bill in September drafted by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), so the two chambers would need to reconcile the bills — or the House could just pass the Senate bill. In a “Dear Colleague” letter on Sunday, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) wrote that House Democrats “ought to take swift action to ensure that we secure reforms to our electoral count system” if the Senate passes its bill.
Given the time constraints, one way to pass the measure would be to attach it to a must-pass bill like the government funding legislation or the NDAA. (Attaching it to a larger bill would also avoid a messy amendment process.)
The House also passed its own version of the bill in September drafted by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) and Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), so the two chambers would need to reconcile the bills — or the House could just pass the Senate bill. In a “Dear Colleague” letter on Sunday, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) wrote that House Democrats “ought to take swift action to ensure that we secure reforms to our electoral count system” if the Senate passes its bill.
Given the time constraints, one way to pass the measure would be to attach it to a must-pass bill like the government funding legislation or the NDAA. (Attaching it to a larger bill would also avoid a messy amendment process.)
Raising the debt limit: The debt limit won’t need to be raised until next year. But with Republicans warning they plan to use it as leverage for spending cuts or other policy demands, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and other Democrats are calling for it to be dealt with now while the party still controls Congress. While such a move would deprive House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who’s in line to be speaker, of a potential weapon, it would also remove the burden of raising the debt limit next year with Democratic votes.
Dealing with a potential rail strike: One threat to Congress’s productivity over the next four weeks: the possibility that lawmakers will need to intervene to prevent a crippling railroad strike ahead of the holiday. Negotiations between railroad unions and companies are ongoing, but Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) vowed on “Fox News Sunday” that Congress wouldn’t let a strike happen. Passing legislation to prevent a strike would eat up precious time, though. “I think the whole ballgame right now is the rail strike to be honest,” said Rich Gold, the leader of Holland & Knight’s public policy and regulation group. “That’s going to determine how everything else goes, in terms of how much time that sucks out of the air.”
Extending tax breaks: Tax extenders — which prevent certain tax breaks from expiring on the books — are traditional lame-duck fare. One of the big ones up for extension this year is known as research-and-development amortization. The 2018 Republican tax law required companies to amortize their expenses over five years as a way to help pay for the costs of the bill’s tax cuts — starting Jan. 1, 2022. Much of corporate America is pushing to delay this change until 2026 (when it can presumably be delayed again).
Other K Street priorities: There are only so many must-pass bills to which lobbyists can try to attach their clients’ priorities, so each one is an opportunity. The Coalition for 1099-K Fairness, for instance — members include Airbnb, eBay and Etsy — is pressing for Congress to change a provision in the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill that Biden signed last year. The bill would send a 1099-K tax form to people who have sold as little as $600 of goods online in a year, down from a previous threshold of $20,000 and 200 sales. “Unless Congress acts, this is going to be a significant burden on individual taxpayers and start-ups” said Arshi Siddiqui, a lobbyist for the coalition.
Confirming more judges: Confirming as many of Biden’s judicial nominees as possible isn’t as urgent a priority as it would have been if Democrats had lost the Senate, but Democratic senators are still under pressure to move some nominees, in part, because they would have to be renominated in the new Congress.
There are about two dozen nominees who have already received Senate Judiciary Committee votes. “We believe the nominees who have been waiting the longest should be prioritized, and it might be possible to confirm all 24 of them, especially since seven even have the support of their Republican home-state senators,” Christopher Kang, the chief counsel for Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group, wrote in an email to The Early.
There are about two dozen nominees who have already received Senate Judiciary Committee votes. “We believe the nominees who have been waiting the longest should be prioritized, and it might be possible to confirm all 24 of them, especially since seven even have the support of their Republican home-state senators,” Christopher Kang, the chief counsel for Demand Justice, a liberal judicial advocacy group, wrote in an email to The Early.
Other Democratic priorities: There are other bills Democrats would love to pass before they lose control of the House, such as potential deals to revive the expanded child tax credit and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to allow undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States as children to remain. Biden also said on Thanksgiving that he would try again to pass an assault weapons ban, although the House passed such a bill in July and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that it probably doesn’t have 60 votes in the Senate. All these efforts are long shots.
They need to eliminate the debt ceiling or at least raise it for several years.The Republicans will happily bring down the world economy to own the libs if they get the chance.