![]() Reports indicate that one such measure, to codify the federal recognition of same-sex marriages, is likely to be voted on as soon as this week in the Senate the House had passed a similar bill prior to the elections. While fiscal issues will be front and center, several other legislative items also remain ripe for further action. ![]() Democrats have legislative options for preemptively addressing the debt limit in the lame duck, but will have to decide whether the brinkmanship being proffered by Republicans means they should spend time and political capital on the issue before the end of the year. A complicated deal in the form of the Budget Control Act of 2011, which imposed discretionary spending caps for a decade, meant catastrophe was averted, but threats from Republicans could produce a similar showdown next year. Indeed, in 2011, the newly GOP-controlled House saw a sizable faction of members insist on large spending cuts in exchange for their support in raising the debt limit. Estimates put the date by which the debt limit will need to be addressed at some point in the third quarter of 2023, but lessons from the last shift to a Republican House majority under a Democratic president loom large. Given the expected narrow House Republican majority, Democrats will also need to decide whether to try to address the debt ceiling in the lame duck or leave it on the agenda for next year. The expected difficulty of managing the House under a narrow Republican majority in January may factor into some members’ calculations a high-stakes showdown over keeping the government open just weeks into a new Congress may be an unattractive enough proposition for some GOP legislators that they will be willing to leave it to the lame duck session. Doing so will require both parties actually completing negotiations on a package and ensuring it has the support of at least 10 Republicans in the Senate necessary to end a filibuster. With Republicans likely to take control of the House-albeit narrowly-Democrats will be especially eager to complete work on a full omnibus package for the balance of the fiscal year. Prior to the passage of the current stopgap measure in September, factions of House and Senate Republicans had lobbied to run a temporary spending bill into January 2023 in possible anticipation of a new majority with different spending priorities. ![]() The current measure funding discretionary federal programs expires on December 16, so avoiding a partial government shutdown requires action before that deadline. Two fiscal issues are likely to be a major focus of the last weeks of the 117 th Congress: getting an omnibus spending bill done and deciding whether or not to deal with the debt limit.
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