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The Republican-controlled 119th Congress is facing a backlog of legislative duties it can no longer ignore – yet it has only eight weeks left in session until Democrats take the helm in both chambers.
While all of the legislative tasks are supposed to be bipartisan, Democrats’ monumental wins in the midterm elections will likely complicate already tense negotiations around national defense spending, farm support, government funding and more.
“Now is not the time for whining, excuses, or cowardice,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., posted Friday on social media. “Republicans only have 20 legislative days left this Congress to lock in America First wins and take away leverage points from the Democrats. Leave nothing on the table.”
Republican leadership has so far remained silent on which major items they intend to tackle first, but they must extend government funding before Dec. 11 if they want to avoid another shutdown.
Appropriations negotiations have imploded multiple times during the 119th Congress, with Senate Democrats refusing to provide the necessary votes for funding bills unless Republicans agreed to certain policy demands (they never did, so Democrats eventually gave up both times).
Though Congress is supposed to renew and update funding levels for all federal agencies via 12 annual appropriations bills, it rarely does so on schedule even without major partisan disputes.
Congress has failed to pass even one of 12 government spending bills for fiscal year 2027 – which began Oct. 1 – that appropriate annual funding for federal agencies. Instead, they punted the funding deadline to Dec. 11 via a continuing resolution.
Given the lack of time to finish the appropriations process, lawmakers will almost certainly pass another continuing resolution, provided Democrats cooperate.
And since the current continuing resolution also extended expiring federal transportation funding, lawmakers will have to decide whether to again tack that on, or whether to move forward the bipartisan five-year reauthorization bill.
That bill, the BUILD America 250 Act, cleared the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in May but has seen no floor action.
Hundreds of organizations have urged Congress to pass the legislation, which among other things provides new revenue for the dwindling Highway Trust Fund for the first time in more than 30 years. The HTF funds the maintenance, repair and building of U.S. highways and mass transit systems and will go insolvent by 2028 if no new funding is appropriated.
Equally as important is the National Defense Authorization Act.
Congress has passed a version of the NDAA, which authorizes annual Pentagon spending toplines and programs, since 1961.
Currently, both the Senate and House NDAA versions, which lawmakers must meld at some point, have roughly the same topline, about $1.15 trillion. The defense appropriations bill, which has a slightly narrower scope than the NDAA, appropriates about $1.07 trillion in spending.
Republicans had planned on providing an additional roughly $350 billion requested by the White House in a party-line budget reconciliation bill, given that many Democrats are vehemently opposing a $1.5 trillion topline.
While some Republicans, like Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, want to use the remaining weeks of the Republican-controlled 119th Congress to push through that budget reconciliation bill, Republican leadership largely thinks that isn’t feasible given the plethora of more pressing tasks.
The U.S. House is already scheduled to hold a vote as soon as Monday on impeaching Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, as well as a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act II.
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