With the Thanksgiving recess in the rearview mirror, lawmakers are returning to Washington for a busy lame-duck session before a new Congress takes over in January.
Democrats will control both chambers of Congress for just a few more weeks before ceding the House of Representatives back to Republicans. President Joe Biden’s party will still control the Senate when the 118th Congress takes over in January, and a Dec. 6 runoff in Georgia will determine whether they have a 51-seat majority, or experience another two years of a 50-50 chamber.
Before the GOP can take over the House, the 117th Congress still has plenty of work ahead of them in the coming weeks — including addressing the debt limit, government funding, same-sex marriage and Electoral Count Act reform.
“We are going to try to have as productive a lame-duck session as possible,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said to reporters earlier this month, noting that colleagues can expect “long hours” and “heavy work.”
No small feat for a narrowly divided Congress — especially in its waning days — but lawmakers have defied these odds several times before in the last two years, and hope to do so one last time before January.
Debt limit, government funding and defense spending
Arguably the most imminent priority for lawmakers to address is funding to keep the government running past Dec. 16, after passing a short-term funding measure in September that kicked the can down the road until after the midterms.
Lawmakers can either come together on an omnibus spending agreement for the next fiscal year, or pass yet another short-term measure, known as a continuing resolution, which will set up yet another funding battle down the road.
Also potentially on the docket, but somewhat less urgent, is action to address the debt limit. Lawmakers took action late last year to raise the debt limit, increasing the nation’s borrowing limit while ensuring that the country does not default on its obligations.
It’s not clear when the country will approach the debt ceiling, but it’s estimated to be at some point next year. But with the increasing likelihood of different parties controlling the House and Senate next year, negotiatiors may want to use the lame duck session as an opportunity to agree on a longer-term spending bill and address the debt limit.
“I think it would be very important for us to do so,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, said on ABC’s “This Week,” noting that Republicans have previously they would use the debt limit as leverage to try and make cuts to Biden administration priorities and other federal programs.
“It’s important to note that what the Republicans have said is they’re going to use the vote on the debt limit as leverage to cut Medicare and Social Security,” Pelosi said, adding: “Our best shot I think is to do it now.”
A number of lawmakers have called for the abolition of the debt limit, with House Democrats sending a letter asking Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer to “permanently undo the debt limit” in the lame duck session. President Biden has expressed opposition to that, calling it “irresponsible,” despite the fact that his own Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said last year that “it’s become increasingly damaging to America to have a debt ceiling.”
Lawmakers have also discussed addressing the debt limit using reconciliation, the Senate procedure by which budgetary bills can pass with a simple majority rather than the 60-vote filibuster threshold. Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said that he has spoken about that option with Leader Schumer and others.
“We need to think about how much time it takes and when it will be done,” Durbin told reporters Tuesday, adding: “I’m hopeful we can do something by the end of this year.”
Also on lawmakers’ plates is the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual defense spending bill that has passed Congress every year for the last six decades. The bill typically enjoys widespread support from both parties, but it’s yet other massive spending bill that lawmakers will rush to address before the year comes to an end.
Marriage equality
Earlier this month, the Senate voted in bipartisan fashion to advance a bill that will enshrine protections for same-sex and interracial marriage into law.
Support for the bill gained momentum in recent months in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade over the summer. In a concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the court should “reconsider” a number of other key rulings, including landmark decisions that granted a right to contraception and same-sex marriage – raising alarm that those rights might be next on the chopping block.
The House of Representatives passed their version of a bill legalizing same-sex marriage in July, with 47 Republicans joining all present Democrats to pass the measure. But action on the bill was stalled until a group of lawmakers introduced an amendment to address religious liberties, which they believed would help the measure get enough Republican support to pass the Senate.
The motion needed backing of 10 Senate Republicans, in addition to all 50 Senate Democrats, in order to tee the bill up for final passage.
On Monday, the Senate is set to vote to advance the Senate’s changes to the bill, which will again need 60 votes to pass.
In a letter to colleagues on Sunday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said that the chamber “stands ready” to take up the Senate’s version of the bill: “The Senate will soon pass the Respect for Marriage Act, and we must be prepared to take another vote on that historic bill to send it to the White House.”
Electoral Count Act reform
Lawmakers are set to take up reforms to the Electoral Count Act of 1887, an arcane law that attempts to clarify how elections are administered, which former President Donald Trump and his allies sought to exploit in an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
A bipartisan group of lawmakers over the summer introduced legislation which would clarify ambiguous language in the law, establish the vice president’s largely ceremonial role in vote counting, raise the threshold for objections to election results and promote the orderly transfer of power.
It would be the first major electoral reform since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, which saw a mob of Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
The Electoral Count Reform Act would, importantly, clarify that the role of the vice president in the electoral count is “solely ministerial” and clarifies that they don’t “have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors.”
The bill would also dramatically raise the threshold for the number of members of Congress needed to object to a state’s election results — to at least one-fifth of members of both the House and Senate — in order to “reduce the likelihood of frivolous objections by ensuring that objections are broadly supported.” Currently, it just takes one member of each chamber to object to a state’s slate of electors.
The measure would also specify that a state can only appoint one slate of electors that must be submitted by the state’s governor, or another official specified in the state’s laws or constitution. It would also provide for expedited judicial review process for raising questions for a state’s elections and protects each state’s popular vote by striking down a provision of an 1845 law that could allow state legislatures to declare a “failed election” and override the vote.
The Presidential Transition Improvement Act would clarify when presidential candidates can obtain transition resources when an election is contested.
The bill cleared a major procedural hurdle in September when it easily passed the Senate rules committee, setting it up for a vote in the Senate. The reforms carry the backing of Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., signaling that it will have enough support to pass the chamber.
