It has not been a very productive year for the House, even when it wasn’t outright humiliating for its dwindling Republican majority. The body passed historically little in the way of legislation in 2023, defenestrated one speaker and elected another after almost a month of chaos, and expelled its first member in more than two decades.
What Congress didn’t do, though, was strike a long-term funding solution to keep the government open, or pass a supplementary appropriations bill to keep money flowing to Ukraine and Israel. And with money and time running out, lawmakers will have to shake off holiday inertia and move quickly in the new year to get those priorities finished.
Here are four big questions about Congress’s January slate.
What exactly does Congress have to get done — and by when?
The first major priority Congress will be confronted with is keeping the government open. In September and again in November this year, Congress passed a pair of continuing resolutions, or CRs, to prevent imminent government shutdowns, but time is once again pressing.
The November shutdown, as Vox’s Li Zhou has previously reported, used an unusual two-part structure, funding part of the government through January 19 and the rest through February 2. That means lawmakers have just nine legislative days before five areas of government — transportation, housing, energy, agriculture, and veterans’ affairs — run out of money.
According to CNN, House Republican leadership has little interest in another short-term funding punt, but a full-year CR will face bipartisan opposition in the Senate, setting up an impasse — and there’s also no sign of agreement on funding levels in a new appropriations bill.
Resolving that impasse can be thought of as Congress’s only firm deadline — if it doesn’t happen by midnight on January 19, a partial government shutdown begins, and additional agencies will shut down two weeks later, in February.
It’s not the only…
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