Congress is in recess in the leadup to Election Day, but will return afterward for a lame-duck session. Pictured is the U.S. Capitol on March 14, 2024. (Jennifer Shutt | States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Members of Congress left Capitol Hill last week to focus their attention on the campaign trail during the six weeks leading up to Election Day, leaving much of their work unfinished.

The Republican House and Democratic Senate are scheduled to remain on recess until Nov. 12, though the urgent needs created in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which are fully funded for the moment, could bring the chambers back into session before then.

When lawmakers do return to Washington, D.C., they’ll need to address the must-pass legislation they’ve left on autopilot instead of negotiating new bipartisan compromises.

So far this year, lawmakers have pushed off reaching brokering agreement on must-pass measures like the farm bill as well as this year’s batch of government funding bills and the annual defense policy legislation.

Kids’ online safety, radiation exposure

There are also a handful of measures that have passed one chamber with broad bipartisan support, but haven’t been taken up on the other side of the Capitol that leadership could decide to move forward during November or December.

For example, an interesting combination of senators, led by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, are advocating for House Republican leaders to hold votes on a pair of online safety bills designed to better protect children from the darker side of the internet.

The rail safety bill drafted by a bipartisan group of senators from Ohio and Pennsylvania after the train derailment in East Palestine remains unaddressed following more than a year of intransigence.

And legislation to reauthorize the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, or RECA, which passed the Senate on a broadly bipartisan vote earlier this year, sits on a shelf collecting dust in the House.

Cancer victims, Indigenous communities and many others have pressed House GOP leadership to hold a vote to reauthorize the program after it expired this summer, but they have avoided it due to cost.

Five-week lame duck

Lawmakers interviewed by States Newsroom and congressional leaders all indicated the outcome of the November elections will have significant sway on what Congress approves during the five-week lame-duck session that spans November and December.

All interviews took place before Hurricane Helene made landfall and Israel was directly attacked by Iran, both of which are likely to be at the top of congressional leaders’ to-do lists.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune said it’s “hard to say” what, if anything, Congress will approve during the lame-duck session.

“I think a lot will be shaped by what happens in November,” the South Dakota Republican said.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said just a day before Hurricane Helene made landfall that Democrats would advocate for passing natural disaster response funding previously requested by the Biden administration.

“Extreme weather events are on the rise and they affect everyone — in blue states, purple states and red states,” Jeffries said. “This is not a partisan issue, it’s an American issue in terms of being there, in times of need for everyday Americans, who have had their lives and livelihood upended.”

Other House Democratic priorities during the lame duck include approving the dozen full-year government funding bills that were supposed to be completed before Oct. 1, the defense policy bill that had the same deadline and the farm bill, which is more than a year overdue.

Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley said he “sure hopes” the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act reauthorization bill reaches the president’s desk before the end of the year.

He didn’t rule out lobbying to attach it to a must-pass government funding bill, but said the real hurdle is House GOP leaders.

“It doesn’t need help in the Senate. It just needs the House,” Hawley said. “I’ve had good, productive conversations with Speaker [Mike] Johnson in the last few weeks, and I appreciate his personal engagement on this, and I hope that that will lead to action.”

Haley said the House allowing RECA to expire, preventing people who qualify for the program from receiving benefits, was “outrageous.”

Defense priorities, farm bill

Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said staff would work during October to bridge the differences between the two chambers on the annual defense policy bill, called the National Defense Authorization Act.

Those staff-level talks will lay the foundation for Republicans and Democrats to meet once they return to Capitol Hill following the elections.

“We have to be ready when we come back to go right to the ‘Big Four’ meeting,” he said, referring to the top leaders in both chambers. “That’s our objective.”

Reed said many of the differences between the House and the Senate aren’t typical Defense Department policy issues per se, but are “more political, cultural, social.”

Congress may begin to debate additional military and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine this year, though that’s more likely to happen next year, Reed said.

Senate Agriculture Committee Chair Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said she was making a “big push” for the House and Senate to reach agreement on the farm bill in the months ahead, though she cautioned talks don’t actually constitute a conference.

“I wouldn’t call it a conference; technically to have a conference, you have to have a bill passed by the House and a bill passed by the Senate, which will not happen,” Stabenow said.

“But I believe that there is a way,” Stabenow added. “I believe there’s a way to get a bipartisan bill.”

Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, the top Republican on the Agriculture panel, said lawmakers didn’t need the election results to “start working through our disagreements” on the farm bill, adding there’s some new momentum in talks.

“I think what’s changed is that there is a recognition among members, all members, how difficult it is right now as a farmer,” Boozman said. “So that’s really what’s changed in the last three or four months. It’s developing a real sense of urgency for these folks.”

Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst said the election outcome could influence what lawmakers choose to accomplish during the lame-duck session.

“There’s any number of scenarios, whether it’s NDAA, whether it’s farm bill, whether it’s anything else,” she said. “But it comes down to Leader Schumer.” New York Democrat Chuck Schumer is the majority leader in the Senate.

Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine said he expects Congress will broker some agreement on government funding legislation and the NDAA, but not necessarily anything else.

“In an odd way, the better the Dems do on Nov. 5, the more we’ll get done,” Kaine said. “Because I think if the House is going to flip back to Dem, I think the Rs will say, ‘Well, let’s get a whole lot of stuff done before the House goes down.’ So I think the better we do, the more we’ll get done in the lame duck.”

Kaine said if Democrats do well in the elections, they might not need to approve additional aid for Ukraine this Congress, since that funding can last into next year.

“If we don’t do well in the [elections], we might need to do it in the lame duck,” Kaine said. “So that’ll all depend.”

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The U.S. Capitol on Sept. 23, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Congress is on track to approve legislation this week that will give lawmakers until mid-December to broker agreement on the annual government funding bills that were supposed to become law before the end of this month.

The stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution, has the broad bipartisan support it needs to move through House and Senate votes this week, though senators will need to reach agreement to vote on the legislation before the Oct. 1 deadline when federal spending runs out.

The 49-page bill, released Sunday after weeks of stalemate as House Republicans went at it alone, is no guarantee that Congress will actually wrap up its work on the full-year bills during the next 12 weeks left before this session of Congress is over, since lawmakers can pass as many stopgap spending bills as they want.

Continuing resolutions essentially extend current spending levels and policy for a set amount of time. They are intended to give the House and Senate additional time to conference final versions of the dozen full-year spending bills.

Nov. 5 election and the lame duck

The election results will likely determine whether the Republican House and Democratic Senate move to reach agreement on the full-year bills during the lame-duck session that will begin after Election Day, or kick the can down the road into next year, when the balance of power could be substantially different.

Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, appears inclined toward wrapping up work on the full-year appropriations bills in December, saying during a press conference Tuesday that lawmakers would deal with funding decisions during the lame-duck session.

Johnson signaled that he’s going to try to move all the final, conferenced spending bills across the floor one by one, as opposed to bundling all 12 together in an omnibus or packaging several of the bills together in what’s called a mini-bus. Such large bills regularly draw opposition from conservative Republicans.

“We have broken the Christmas omni and I have no intention of going back to that terrible tradition,” Johnson said. “We don’t want any buses, we’re not going to do any buses.”

The stopgap spending bill Congress is expected to approve this week would set the next deadline for government funding on Dec. 20, four days before Christmas.

Senate and House both struggle

Johnson also laid the blame for Congress not completing work on the full-year government funding bills at the feet of Senate Democrats, arguing that the House did all of its work.

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved 11 of the dozen appropriations bills with broadly bipartisan votes, but was unable to garner consensus on the Homeland Security spending bill.

None of those bills have come up on the Senate floor for votes, in part, because it can take weeks in that chamber to move spending bills through the amendment process.

The House Appropriations Committee reported its dozen bills out along party-line votes, without the Democratic support that would be needed for the bills to actually become law during divided government.

House Republican leaders passed five of the bills across the floor, including Defense, Homeland Security, Interior-Environment, Military Construction-VA and State-Foreign Operations.

House GOP leaders attempted to pass the Legislative Branch bill, which provides funding for Congress and its associated agencies, but were unsuccessful. House rules allow that chamber to debate and hold votes on bills in a matter of hours, a much faster pace than the days or weeks it often takes the Senate.

Neither Senate leaders nor House leadership have made any effort to conference the full-year spending bills, a process that is needed to reach the bipartisan, bicameral versions that must pass if Congress wants to avoid another stopgap spending bill in December.

The process typically takes at least six weeks, and with both chambers set to leave town at the end of this week for a six-week break, there likely won’t be enough time to conference all the bills before the mid-December deadline that will be set by the continuing resolution.

‘Stay away from poison pills’

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, criticized Johnson for trying to pass a six-month stopgap spending bill through the House earlier this month, saying it was a waste of time.

That legislation, which didn’t garner the support to pass, included with it a GOP bill that would have required proof of citizenship to register to vote.

“If both sides keep working together, if we stay away from poison pills and partisan spectacle, then the American people can rest assured there won’t be a government shutdown,” Schumer said. “But we still have more work to do.”

The Biden administration signaled its support for the stopgap spending bill Tuesday, releasing a Statement of Administration Policy calling “for swift passage of this bill in both chambers of the Congress to avoid a costly, unnecessary Government shutdown and to ensure there is adequate time to pass full-year FY 2025 appropriations bills later this year.”

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