WASHINGTON — Voters may have given Democrats control of Congress in the midterm elections, but Republicans will remain in charge of both chambers during the lame-duck session that spans November and December. 

The relatively brief five-week schedule, which begins Monday, gives GOP leaders a chance to wrap up unfinished work before handing over power when the new session begins in early January. 

Congress could send the president several major pieces of legislation during that time, including the annual defense policy bill, the farm bill, a measure to regulate the college sports landscape and permitting reform to ease regulation on large construction projects.

But lawmakers must pass a government funding bill before Dec. 11 to avoid another shutdown. Congress used a stopgap spending bill to keep federal programs up and running after the new fiscal year began Oct. 1.

Democrats and Republicans don’t have enough time to broker bipartisan agreement on the dozen full-year appropriations bills, which will likely total around $1.9 trillion.

That means lawmakers must use another stopgap spending bill to extend funding into next year, when Democrats will take the lead negotiating with President Donald Trump. 

North Dakota senator obstacle to confirmation push

Senate Republicans are expected to use the rest of their time to confirm nominees before leaving for the holidays in mid-December. Democrats are unlikely to advance Trump’s nominees once they take over the Senate majority. 

A Senate GOP aide told States Newsroom that confirming judicial nominees will be a top priority in the coming session, in addition to funding the government, approving a farm bill and passing the annual defense policy bill. 

Sen. Kevin Cramer, however, continues to block confirmation of “any and all” of Trump’s nominees to pressure the administration to eliminate a President Joe Biden-era rule dealing with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wetland easements that the North Dakota Republican has said harm his state’s property owners.

After FWS Director Brian Nesvik visited North Dakota in October, Cramer said he would release a few more of his holds, according to his office. 

Cramer has been willing to incrementally lift the holds based on progress he sees from the administration, allowing the confirmation of Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling. Cramer has also lifted a hold on Chris Klomp, nominee for deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Overdue farm bill

The farm bill, a substantial package of agriculture aid and nutrition programs, was supposed to become law years ago, but hasn’t amid long-running disagreements between the two parties. 

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said in a statement he hoped to finally reach a deal in the next few weeks, an accomplishment that will require support from Democrats. 

“Family farmers contending with numerous challenges to their viability cannot afford another Farm Bill delay,” he said. “Producers and rural communities are counting on us to deliver the predictability, certainty and support that a modernized Farm Bill provides. Congress has the opportunity to show them we understand how urgently they need these critical updates and I remain committed to helping get them signed into law this year.”

The Senate Agriculture Committee approved its version of the farm bill in September but it didn’t garner bipartisan support. 

House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn “G.T.” Thompson, R-Pa., said in a statement that moving “a full, five-year farm bill across the finish line remains a top priority of mine as we look to the remaining legislative days of 2026. American producers and consumers cannot afford to wait any longer.”

Minnesota Democratic Rep. Angie Craig, ranking member on the committee, said in a statement she remains “engaged in bipartisan, bicameral conversations” to address the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, allowing a gasoline blend with 15% ethanol and other priorities.

“I remain deeply committed to addressing the unfunded SNAP mandate that Republicans forced onto states and counties,” she said. “Family farmers across the country are hurting right now and desperately want to see a farm bill that opens up domestic markets, like year-round E15, robustly funds conservation programs which are relied upon to boost farm income, and provides certainty for the next five years. I will continue to work with my colleagues to address these issues and more in the coming weeks.”

Defense authorization, college sports bills

Congress could reach a final deal on the massive defense policy bill, known as the National Defense Authorization Act, that lawmakers have approved annually for more than 60 years. 

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Ala., said in a statement that passing “the NDAA continues to be my highest priority, and I’m confident we can get this across the finish line.”

“This legislation is crucial to our national security, and a failure to pass it would not only weaken American deterrence, but also abandon critical support for our men and women in uniform, including a pay raise and better access to healthcare and childcare,” he said. 

House Republican leadership will have to decide whether to put a college sports bill the Senate approved earlier this year up for a vote, a step its supporters say must happen this year. 

A spokesperson for the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee said in a statement there “is no realistic path to secure the same broad, bipartisan support for a new bill in 2027 and beyond. 

“Passing the Senate-approved bipartisan bill through the House and sending it to the President’s desk during the lame duck Congress gives House Republicans an opportunity to close out the 119th Congress with a significant win for President Trump, HBCUs, women’s sports, and student athletes,” the spokesperson wrote. “An attempt to amend it would be a surefire defeat for the colleges and fans counting on PCSA’s enactment.”

House GOP leaders will also have to decide whether to debate and vote on a permitting reform bill that a bipartisan group of senators released in late September. The Senate is scheduled to take its first procedural vote on the legislation, which aims to speed construction of public projects by streamlining regulatory reviews, this week.

GOP leadership shuffle and ethics overhaul

In addition to work on legislation, the House could change its rules to address the various types of ethics violations that lawmakers engaged in during the last couple years. 

Florida Republican Rep. Kat Cammack and New Mexico Democratic Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández have worked together for months on a way to force better behavior.

Off the floor, House Republicans will vote behind closed doors to decide who will lead them in the minority during the next Congress. 

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced this week he will not seek to remain at the helm of the House GOP, setting up a race between Republican Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio. 

The other three congressional leaders — House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Republican Leader John Thune — are all expected to remain in charge of their various conferences. 

WASHINGTON — U.S. senators departed Capitol Hill on Wednesday night for their campaign break, leaving numerous policy disputes unresolved.

The chamber won’t return until Nov. 9 for the five-week lame-duck session, when party leaders will have to decide which bills they want to negotiate during what could be the final days of unified Republican control.

Democrats have become increasingly optimistic they will be able to flip the House and possibly the Senate from red to blue amid rising frustration with the cost of living, the war in Iran and unrestrained development of artificial intelligence. 

The bills that hang in the balance aren’t small by any measure:

• Congress has yet to reach final agreement on the dozen annual government funding bills that total about $1.8 trillion.
• Lawmakers haven’t brokered a compromise on the massive annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act.
• The years-delayed farm bill has yet to see enough momentum to make it to the president’s desk. 

Agriculture Committee Chairman John Boozman, R-Ark., said this week during a brief interview he hopes a final bipartisan version of that farm aid and nutrition assistance bill will be worked out later this year.

The Arkansas Republican also criticized Democrats for not cooperating more with Republicans on major initiatives ahead of the elections. 

“I think a lot of these things will be easier once the election’s over and they don’t feel like they’re giving the president a win on legislation,” he said. 

Boozman, who isn’t up for reelection this cycle and won’t need to campaign during the break, said he doesn’t have plans to begin serious negotiations with the House Agriculture chairman or the top Democrats on the committee during the October recess, though he said they may text each other. 

Spending bills

In addition to working out a compromise on the farm bill, Boozman is one of the relatively few lawmakers tasked with shepherding a government funding bill through Congress. 

Lawmakers were supposed to enact all 12 of those measures before the start of the fiscal year on Oct. 1, but instead leaned on a short-term stopgap measure to avoid a shutdown until mid-December. 

When senators and their House counterparts, who left for their campaign break earlier this month, return after the election they’ll have to decide whether to come to an agreement or pass on another temporary funding bill to keep federal departments up and running. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, declined to directly answer a question in mid-September about whether Democrats would negotiate those appropriations bills with Republicans during the lame duck, if Democrats win the majority and would take over come January. 

“Look, the bottom line is first I think we have a damn good chance of winning the Senate,” he said. “And we will have to sit down with our Republican colleagues and work out the best bill possible in terms of approps. That’s one area where Dems and Republicans have worked pretty well together.” 

Holding over final decisions on major legislation until next year would still require Congress to garner President Donald Trump’s support. 

While funding levels and policy might not change substantially if those bills are negotiated during the lame duck or next year, leadership on the powerful Appropriations Committee could. 

Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Susan Collins is in an especially close reelection bid in her home state of Maine. 

Regardless of whether Collins secures reelection or loses, she will still be in charge of negotiating those government funding bills with Democrats this year. But if voters do elect her Democratic opponent instead, Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski would likely become the top Republican on the committee next year. 

Lawmakers will also likely want to make some progress on defense policy this year, having approved the annual National Defense Authorization Act every year for more than six decades. 

The massive package gives Congress its best opportunity, other than the Defense appropriations bill, to place guardrails on the Pentagon and shape the military’s future. 

Permitting reform

One bill that will very likely be on the Senate floor during the lame-duck session is a long-sought overhaul of how the federal government conducts environmental reviews and permits infrastructure projects. 

The bipartisan agreement was announced shortly before the Senate left for the break by West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee; Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking member on that committee; Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee; and New Mexico Democratic Sen. Martin Heinrich, ranking member on that committee. 

Capito said during a press conference the “historic” agreement would make it “faster and more efficient and easier to build infrastructure projects” without eroding “strong protections for our environment.”

“In my state, whether it’s too long to build roads or energy infrastructure and other investment, it costs us jobs, it costs us the strengthening of our local economies,” she said. “So when these projects are not built, what happens? Those costs are shifted onto our families, who pay more for energy, housing and other items.”

The goal, Capito said, is for the package to be the first vote when the Senate returns in mid-November, to start the sometimes long and complicated floor process. 

Whitehouse said negotiators had to go down several “dead-end avenues” before they were able to reach the final agreement they unveiled Wednesday, though that’s not the end of the process. 

“This is a hugely important milestone but there are two big pieces of work in front of us,” he said, noting that their Senate colleagues now get to review the bill and offer amendments. 

The second hurdle, Whitehouse said, will be “returning to regular order for wind and solar projects in the Trump administration,” which remains unresolved. 

“But we have had what I consider to be a very reasonable opening proposal from the Trump administration. We need more clarity on that,” he said. “And when we have more clarity on that they’ll be back-and-forth to try to resolve those issues. That will happen in parallel with the amendment work.”

Whitehouse said if the legislation becomes law it should “lower electricity costs measurably for Americans,” increase “clean” power, add construction jobs throughout the country and raise the overall economy. 

Tens of thousands of Americans continue to lose access to food assistance each month, even as Congress debates slowing down major cuts to federal food stamps.

New data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows more than 330,000 Americans lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, between May and June, the latest numbers available. 

More than 5 million people have lost food stamps since the enactment last July of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cut taxes and federal safety net programs. The law changed SNAP eligibility rules, ended certain work requirement exemptions and shifted new costs to states that administer the federal program.

An analysis by the anti-hunger nonprofit Food Research and Action Center shows SNAP participation has decreased since the new law in every state except Alaska. State leaders there cited unique geographic and economic conditions, including higher food prices and high seasonal unemployment specific to Alaska. 

In Arizona, SNAP participation dropped by more than half since July 2025, with about 421,000 people receiving assistance this June, the center’s data shows. Louisiana’s enrollment dropped by more than 173,000 — a decrease of about 22%. Participation in Illinois dropped by more than 368,000 — a drop of about 20%.

Those numbers come as advocates pressure Congress to reverse the SNAP cuts they say will exacerbate growing hunger across the country as grocery prices continue to soar.

While nonprofits and many local, state and federal political leaders have pushed for a complete rescission of those cuts, Republicans in control of Congress have so far only signed off on delaying some of their impact.

For months, the Senate has been debating details of the farm bill, a major piece of legislation that funds SNAP, farm subsidies and rural development programs. Earlier this month, the Republican-led Senate Agriculture Committee approved on party lines a farm bill proposal that would delay for one year impending SNAP cost shifts to states. Democrats had pushed for a two-year extension.

That legislation awaits debate by the full Senate before the current legislation’s Sept. 30 expiration.

Last year’s tax and spending law requires states to cover more of SNAP’s administrative costs, and beginning in fall 2027, states for the first time will fund some benefits themselves. The new law will penalize states depending on their payment error rates — a technical calculation by the feds of SNAP overpayments and underpayments, not fraud. That change could cost states billions of dollars, raising fears about the future of the program. 

If the version of the farm bill that advanced this month is passed, states would have until October 2028 to lower their error rates before they are required to shoulder part of the costs. 

Aside from coming up with the funds, states will likely need to implement new IT and budgeting processes. Historically, SNAP benefits were not a budget line item for states because federal funds flowed directly to recipients’ benefit cards, Lauren Kallins, a senior legislative director for the National Conference of State Legislatures, told lawmakers in July. 

“There are lots of questions about how and when the cost share will be paid,” Kallins said. “Will this be in real time as benefits are issued? Will it be reconciled at a later date? We don’t know.”

Republicans, including Arkansas U.S. Sen. John Boozman who leads the agriculture committee, have argued that error rates are evidence that improvements are needed in state administration of the program.

Anti-hunger advocacy groups say the one-year delay is insufficient to protect states and people relying on SNAP.

“We urge Senators to speak out against this flawed Farm Bill and to stop it from advancing to the floor for a vote,” Crystal FitzSimons, president of the Food Research and Action Center, said in a statement last week. “Congress must use any other legislative vehicle to reverse the SNAP cuts and address the cost shifts to states to provide meaningful assistance to both families and farmers.” 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org. 

Republican members of the Senate Agriculture Committee voted Wednesday to advance a farm bill, though Democrats on the committee voted against the package due to continued disagreements on a nutrition section of the bill. 

The committee marked up the bill in August, then recessed after a failed vote as Democrats held out over their proposal for an extension of when some states will have to begin paying for a share of federal nutrition benefits. Republican leadership amended the bill before the August hearing to offer a one-year extension, but Democrats continued to argue for a two-year extension. 

While Republicans hold the majority in the committee, Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s more than 90-day public hiatus due to a health issue meant the body didn’t have enough votes to pass the farm bill from the committee in August. 

McConnell returned to the Capitol earlier in the week, allowing Republicans in the agriculture committee to advance the bill along party lines. 

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, said in each of the five farm bills he has worked on, the opposing parties “always seem to come together at the end” to get the bill done.

“Honestly, that’s what ought to be happening here, folks,” Thune said. 

Thune said he didn’t understand why Democrats were choosing to “block vote” against a bipartisan bill that is “principally about production agriculture.” 

The farm bill is typically reauthorized every five years, but the many programs under the bill have operated on various extensions of the 2018 farm bill for the past several years. 

Democratic Sen. John Fetterman from Pennsylvania said the ag sector is “begging” for a new farm bill. 

“We’ve got to find a way to pass this thing because people are coming all the way from my state saying, ‘We can’t keep waiting for this,’” Fetterman said. “We have to deliver for our farmers.” 

The error rate issue

Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act included language that requires states to lower their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program payment error rates, which measures a state’s accuracy in determining who is eligible for SNAP and how much they receive. 

The latest SNAP payment error rates show only nine states are below the 6% error rate threshold that allows their SNAP programs to continue to be 100% funded by the federal government. As the law currently stands, all other states will have to pay 5%, 10% or 15% of SNAP benefits costs in their state starting Oct. 2027. 

States with an error rate above 13.34%, however, are eligible for a two-year extension. Democrats sought to extend this extension to all states, especially as some states are seemingly raising their current error rates so they can benefit from the extension. 

In August, Republicans on the Senate agriculture committee adjusted the farm bill proposal to include a one-year extension, but Democrats would not vote in favor of the bill.

Farm bill proposal fails in US Senate ag committee over SNAP error rate issue

Ranking member Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said it was her goal to “get this farm bill done, and to get it done by the end of the year,” and noted difficulties facing farmers and ranchers – like global trade disruptions, input costs and “headwinds” from tariffs. 

The Democrat said she was appreciative of Chairman John Boozman’s one-year delay, but said it would still allow certain states to get off “scot-free” while other states need tens of millions of dollars, according to estimates from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, to pay for their nutrition programs. 

“We don’t want to have a situation where high-error-rate states get off scot-free while the rest of us pay,” Klobuchar said. “And we have shown our commitment and will continue to do that to improving this bill to get us to a bipartisan product that can be successful on the Senate floor.”

If the version of the bill that advanced Wednesday is passed and signed into law, states would have until October 2028 to lower their error rates before they are required to shoulder part of the costs. 

Thune argued Democrats should be supportive of the bill, because if it doesn’t pass, current law will remain in effect and states will have to start paying for their error rates in 2027.

Thune also noted that the bill included a number of Democrat-led amendments, and bipartisan issues like allowing year-round, nationwide access to E15, a fuel blend with 15% ethanol. 

Several senators sported buttons at the hearing that read “E15 now” and agricultural groups, including National Corn Growers Association, National Farmers Union and the Renewable Fuel Association, thanked the committee for advancing the measure. 

Iowa senators try for amendments to bill

At the August markup of the bill, senators went through the massive piece of legislation title by title with amendments and objections, before voting, unsuccessfully, on the bill as a whole. Boozman did not open the bill up again for amendments Wednesday, though Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, attempted to talk over the roll call vote to argue her amendment should be heard. 

Ernst argued she had filed her amendment prior to the August deadline and held that the final title of the bill was not closed prior to the committee’s recess in August. 

Ernst said her amendment presented a “balanced middle ground approach” to address Proposition 12 – a California law stipulating that certain products, including pork products and bacon, must come from animals who were raised under certain conditions. 

Senate farm bill draft focuses on farm economy, keeps ‘Big Beautiful’ SNAP cuts

Congressional efforts to undo Proposition 12 have been championed by Iowa Republicans and supported by agricultural groups including the National Pork Producers Council and American Farm Bureau Federation. Animal rights, environmental groups and some producer groups, have pushed back against these efforts and celebrated that such language was not included in the Senate’s farm bill. 

Ernst said her amendment would have preserved Prop 12 and other existing laws, while preventing “future mandates from creating an unaffordable patchwork of 50 different production standards for farmers across this country.” 

“This is a serious attempt to find common ground and give our producers certainty going forward,” Ernst said. “Yet, after following the recommended process, again given by your staff, and doing the bipartisan work, we are not even being given an opportunity to bring the solution before the committee for a vote.” 

Boozman said he did not block the amendment from being brought forward during the bill markup in August. 

Sen. Ben Ray Luján, D-New Mexico, said that while he might not vote with Ernst, “procedure” in the committee is supposed to “protect the voices of colleagues to raise issues that matter to us in our states.” 

“Because the senator from Iowa was recognized, and then just run over, that does not sound like the rights of those of us that sit on the committee were protected,” Luján said to Boozman. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley supported his Iowa colleague and said he was “hoping” the committee would “get a chance to vote on an amendment very important to Iowa” as the top pork producing state in the nation.

“It’s just stupid that we don’t have a chance to bring Iowa’s interest to this debate on the first farm bill that we’ve had in discussion for now the third year,” Grassley said. 

Grassley said he had also hoped to discuss his own bipartisan amendment, drafted with Democratic Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Adam Schiff of California to “finalize” certain rules in the Packers and Stockyards Act. 

Grassley has previously criticized U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins for delaying the implementation of rules, which he said were “put in place to protect” meat producers in the U.S., in particular poultry producers who have invested in infrastructure costs while corporations haven’t “honored fully” their commitments with family farmers. 

“I just want to express my irritation about the whole thing, and just hope that somewhere along the line, at least the Secretary of Agriculture will wake up and draw back her delays of these rules,” Grassley said. 

Rollins said in June the rule was a “Biden-era” regulation and that USDA needed additional time to review the rule. 

Boozman said if he opened the bill up for Ernst or Grassley’s amendments, he would have to restart the markup, and “we’re not prepared to do that.”

Sen. John Hoeven, R-North Dakota, reminded his colleagues that there would still be room for amendments to the bill on the Senate floor. 

“Let’s go to the floor, offer up amendments, have robust debate, and get this done for our farmers and ranchers,” Hoeven said. 

Before the House left town Wednesday, members of the House Agriculture Committee heard testimony from producers across the country about increasing demand for “homegrown products” by advancing things like stronger antitrust laws, country of origin labeling and expanded biomanufacturing opportunities. 

In his opening comments, Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pennsylvania, noted that the House had already passed its version of the farm bill, and he looked forward to “the Senate upholding its end of the bargain soon.”

In a statement Wednesday evening, Boozman said advancing the bill from the Senate committee was a “critical step” toward getting results to a “hurting” farm country. 

“While this is clearly welcome progress, we need more of our colleagues’ votes to reflect the urgency of supporting farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and rural communities,” Boozman said.