Donald Trump won’t arrive back at the White House until January. But the president-elect will have fingerprints over every piece of the lame-duck session of Congress.
A week after Election Day, lawmakers are returning to Capitol Hill to the fast-approaching threat of a government shutdown – which, like other big-ticket items, will require a legislative fix – as well as to internal Republican Party leadership contests that Trump is already wielding influence over.
For now, it remains an open question what strategy House Speaker Mike Johnson will pursue for the funding fight. Trump and his team haven’t yet informed GOP leaders how he wants to proceed on those key issues, including the December 20 government spending deadline, according to two people familiar with the discussions.
While many Republicans would prefer Johnson strike a spending deal with Democrats during the lame-duck Congress, plenty of conservatives are urging the GOP to punt everything until Trump has the reins in 2025 – a fight that could complicate Johnson’s road to the speakership in January if Republicans hold the House.
Pushing the funding fight to next year would put Trump in position to have far greater say. But Republicans would risk a chaotic fight in Congress that could dominate the early days of Trump’s second term in office, leaving little time for the GOP to address other priorities.
“If you ask me what my strategic opinion would be, it would be to figure out how to clear the decks so we don’t have a spending fight in March that divides Republicans and unites Democrats,” said GOP Rep. Kelly Armstrong, who is leaving the House at the end of this term to become North Dakota governor. “I get why people want to do it. I understand their theory on it. I think it’s silly to have a fight in March.”
If Republicans decide to punt on that sweeping spending package, it will cut into critical floor time, which the Senate will need to confirm Trump’s nominees next year, and could interfere with the GOP’s plans to pass a sweeping tax and economic package.
“The amount of work that Congress has to do in the first six months of 2025 is dizzying,” said Republican Rep. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota. “I’m not sure members of Congress really understand how big a lift this will be.”
The funding fight isn’t the only outstanding issue for the end of the year. Congress faces a jam-packed to-do list of critical legislative items, including the annual defense policy bill. While members in both parties expected to finish the defense bill this year, they believe the more contentious farm bill will be pushed into 2025, according to two people close to leadership, most likely through some kind of a stopgap extension. Congress will also have to deal with the question of disaster relief for the deadly hurricanes earlier this fall.
The next Trump loyalty test – who will lead the Senate GOP?
Trump is expected to have major sway in a key Republican leadership contest this week: selecting a successor to Mitch McConnell in the Senate.
On Sunday, Trump took to social media to implore those in the race to commit to using what are known as recess appointments, a maneuver that allows a president to go around Congress and fill administration posts when lawmakers are not in session.
Democrats could block such a Republican-led move to go into recess. Still, Sens. John Thune of South Dakota, John Cornyn of Texas and Rick Scott of Florida – the candidates vying to succeed McConnell as Senate GOP leader – all raced to put out statements saying they’d use whatever tactics possible to expeditiously help Trump get his nominees through.
“We must act quickly and decisively to get the president’s nominees in place as soon as possible and all options are on the table to make that happen, including recess appointments,” Thune said in a statement on social media.
Cornyn said he would keep the Senate in session for as long as it took to confirm Trump’s Cabinet, adding that “the Constitution expressly confers the power on the President to make recess appointments.”
Scott also swiftly promised to allow the practice as Senate Republican leader.
The new Senate GOP leader will be elected by secret ballot, meaning no one will know who voted for which candidate. That could serve to insulate the candidates from Trump’s influence over the race. But the president-elect’s demands are a wild card, and Republicans are trying to hedge their bets in case he does indeed swing votes – and to avoid a backlash from Trump and his allies.
While Scott had been considered a long shot in the race, the Florida Republican has received a string of key conservative backers in recent days, in part because of his perceived closeness to the incoming president. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Bill Hagerty of Tennessee and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin have all said they’d back him in the race. The vast majority of Republican senators haven’t said how they’d vote.
As part of the effort to gain traction with Trump, some GOP lawmakers have taken to reaching out to tech magnate Elon Musk, according to sources familiar with the conversations. Musk has already made clear he’s backing Scott for the post.
Party leaders assess lame-duck leverage
Democrats, meanwhile, will return to Washington in a state of disbelief over the extent of their losses last week.
After losing control of the Senate, Democrats will now have just a handful of weeks to push priorities before they are locked out of power in the chamber. On the House side, Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries has not yet discussed plans for the spending fight with his leadership team, as control of the chamber is still up in the air, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
There’s not much time to act. The House and Senate are only expected to be in session for two weeks before leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. When lawmakers return to Washington in December, they will only have about three weeks before the government shutdown deadline.
Many lawmakers are critical of sweeping spending packages known as an omnibus – preferring instead to pass individual appropriations bills for the various agencies that keep the government running. Johnson himself has vowed not to put a gigantic year-end package on the floor.
But Hill leaders could face pressure to either take the omnibus route or pass another stopgap bill since there will be little time after the election to pass individual spending bills. Even when House GOP leaders have tried to take up more narrow spending bills, their own members have at times tanked them on the floor, a sign of how difficult it is for Republicans to govern with an extremely narrow majority.
One item that neither party wants to punt into 2025: a massive defense policy bill with a more than 60-year bipartisan legacy. Congress needs to pass a final, compromise version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025.
The NDAA outlines the policy agenda for the Department of Defense and the US military and authorizes spending for Pentagon priorities, though it does not appropriate the funding itself.
The House and Senate have put forward their own versions of the annual must-pass bill, and top lawmakers must now reconcile those two measures – including differences in spending levels and policy provisions – by negotiating a final version that can pass both chambers.
Lawmakers are also facing a year-end deadline to renew key agriculture policy when Congress returns.
The farm bill – a sweeping piece of legislation that sets food and agriculture policy in the United States – is typically renewed every five years, but it can also be renewed through shorter-term extensions.
In 2023, Congress passed a one-year extension of the 2018 farm bill, which ran through September 30 this year. But key programs under the farm bill don’t lose funding until December 31, setting up yet another major deadline at year’s end.
CNN’s Alayna Treene contributed to this report.