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Congress is in recess for the Thanksgiving holiday, the Senate will return next Monday and the House on Tuesday. The following abbreviated Legislative Update will shed light on lawmakers’ plans following their return to Washington.
When Congress returns from the holiday week off, lawmakers will have three weeks to pass a stop-gap Continuing Resolution (CR) with a current government funding deadline of Friday, December 20. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) seeks to pass a short-term CR into next year, providing President-elect Donald Trump with an opportunity to influence any future Fiscal Year (FY) 2025 spending agreement. This also reduces pressure on Speaker Johnson as he heads into the January 3 floor vote for Speaker in the upcoming 119th Congress. The CR will likely include disaster relief funding, though it is unlikely to be as large as the nearly $99 billion the Biden Administration requested last week. Depending on the length of the funding extension, Trump may begin his second term facing a significant budget battle. When asked of the spending plans, Speaker Johnson said, “We have to clean out last year’s work so that we can move forward with reconciliation and the very aggressive first 100-day agenda that we have planned.” Democratic lawmakers however, are now aiming for an FY 2025 spending agreement grounded in spending caps outlined by the Fiscal Responsibility Act (FRA) of 2023, essentially extending the arrangement that took place earlier this year under Speaker Mike Johnson with the enacted FY24 spending bills.
The current “lame duck” has been slow in progress for lawmakers as they will still need to take up the FY 2025 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Water Resources Development Act (WRDA), an extension of the expiring provisions in the Farm Bill, reauthorization of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and other items set to expire next month if no action is taken.
Looking ahead to the early days of 2025 and the 119th Congress, it seems that Republicans will use their trifecta to work quickly on the renewal of the 2017 GOP tax law passed by Donald Trump during his first presidency. To avoid the filibuster in the Senate, Republicans will utilize the process of budget reconciliation which allows for legislation to pass via simple majority in the Senate and does not require a cloture vote (60 vote-threshold) to advance. Both parties have used the process in recent years (including for the enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2021; American Rescue Plan Act of 2021; and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022) and there will be challenges regarding how large the package is and what will serve as an offset.
Last Thursday, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) officially acknowledged his loss, ending the recount in the Pennsylvania Senate race and conceding to his Republican challenger, Senator-elect Dave McCormick. The concession leads to the final count of for the 119th Congress at 53-47 in favor of the Republicans.
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