Congress Returns for a Five-Week Sprint: Funding, Defense, the Farm Bill, and a Confirmation Fight

The old Congress returned to Washington on Monday with a short clock and a long list. Republicans remain in charge of both chambers until the new, Democratic-led Congress is seated on January 3 — and the Wall Street Journal counts 55 days of majority left. By the House’s own working calendar, as Rep. Andrew Clyde put it on Friday, there are roughly 20 legislative days to use them.

The agenda, in the order the deadlines arrive:

1. Government funding — expires December 11. The stopgap measure that kept the government open through the election runs out in a month. Neither party can finish the twelve regular spending bills for fiscal 2027 in time — not one has passed — so another stopgap into next year is the realistic outcome, and it needs Democratic votes in the Senate.
2. Confirmations — with an obstacle. Senate Republicans say judicial and executive nominees are a top priority while they still hold the majority. But Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota is blocking “any and all” of President Trump’s nominees to pressure the administration to drop a Biden-era Fish and Wildlife Service rule on wetland easements — a one-man hold that could cost the majority weeks.
3. The defense bill. The annual National Defense Authorization Act has passed every year for more than six decades, and a final deal is within reach — the kind of must-pass, bipartisan measure lame ducks are actually good at finishing.
4. The farm bill. Expired programs and farm-state pressure make this the session’s biggest open question, with both agriculture committee chairmen publicly committed to trying.
5. Permitting reform. The session’s most plausible bipartisan policy win: speeding environmental reviews for energy and construction projects, an idea with support in both parties that got stronger, not weaker, after an election fought over energy prices.

Layered over all of it: House Republicans held their leadership elections on Tuesday, choosing the team that will negotiate this agenda’s second half as the incoming minority.

The conservative take: Five weeks is enough time to fund the government cleanly, seat judges, pass a defense bill, and take one real swing at permitting reform — if the majority spends its days on the list above instead of on message votes. The confirmation blockade inside their own ranks is the first problem to solve: you cannot argue for using power while one of your own is sitting on it.