Coming up this week in the lame duck session

Dec 2, 2024 · by Daniel Schuman

Hello Govtrackers,

Welcome back to the lame duck session of Congress, the final weeks before the president, all of the House, and one third of the Senate end their terms. We will soon see Congress attempt to address major legislation concerning funding federal agencies ("appropriations") and push forward any remaining bills they'd like to see enacted before time runs out on January 3rd at noon.

We also will see Congress deal with administrative matters, such as the potential release of the House ethics report concerning former-Rep.Matt Gaetz (R-FL1), election of party and committee leadership for the next Congress, and the adoption of rules that govern the operations of the party caucuses in each chamber in the next Congress.

Bills this week

It's fast-track week in the House, with 52 bills teed-up under the 2/3rds majority for passage rules for less controversial bills. But two others may have some debate. One bill is the Prove It Act, which would give small businesses a new way to challenge regulations that impact them. The other is the Crucial Communist Teaching Act, which would create a voluntary national curriculum to teach students that communism is bad. This bill is valuable to the Republicans less because it might become law but more because it's a way to generate buzz around school curriculum issues.

There's also legislation concerning judicial districts, a bunch of bills concerning public lands, and a ton of legislation to rename post office buildings as well as issue gold medals and commemorative coins. I also see a reauthorization of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, legislation to manage agency software and to allow for public repositories of code generated in federal agencies (the SHARE IT Act), a federal agency performance bill, a bill to exclude service-connected disability compensation when determining a person's wealth, and legislation to address discriminatory land use policies. There are also bills to update the U.S. Code based on newly enacted laws (here's an explainer).

In committee and in the Senate (they don't say)

There are only eleven committee meetings this week scheduled in the House, six in the Senate, and one joint committee meeting. The most consequential hearing is on the Veterans Administration's Budget shortfall, because the Veterans Administration is a tremendously expensive agency and their shortfall disrupted the appropriations process. I also suspect some attention will be paid to the House Oversight Committee's hearing on lessons learned from COVID-19, a hearing into the attempted assassination of Trump, and the public health dangers of PFAS exposures.

The Senate doesn't publish its floor schedule for the upcoming week in any meaningful way, although perhaps that will change under new Majority Leader Thune. On today's schedule: judicial nominations. Later this week? Who knows, but a notice from leadership for the upcoming week would be nice. My guess: confirming judges, confirming judges, confirming judges.

Funding the government before another shutdown

Back in September, Congress didn't reach an agreement on funding levels for federal agencies for the 2025 fiscal year, which started on October 1st, and instead passed a "continuing resolution" to keep funding levels the same until December 20th. Now that date is around the corner and non-essential programs are facing a possible shut-down yet again. (Ideally, Congress would pass full-year appropriations bills covering all federal agencies.). Should there be another continuing resolution, it's likely that other legislation would be attached to that funding bill, such as disaster relief. We will see.