WASHINGTON — Congress is back from its first holiday hiatus of the winter season. And lawmakers only have 13 days in Washington to get a running list of items checked off before they leave again for Christmas.
The list is daunting, and it will require lawmakers to kick it into overdrive to get everything accomplished. Some of those items have a hard deadline at the end of 2025, while others will bleed into the new year — but Congress will want to make substantial progress on those if it has any hope to get them done.
Among the most pressing issues on Congress’ plate is what to do with the expiring Obamacare subsidies that are set to lapse after Dec. 31. That was a major concern and cornerstone of the government shutdown negotiations, but the path forward still remains unclear.
Meanwhile, appropriators must finalize nine of the 12 full-year spending bills before the new deadline of Jan. 30. Top lawmakers will want to make major headway on those bills before leaving for the Christmas recess to ensure they can get those bills negotiated ahead of the deadline.
Here’s a look at some of Congress’ top to-do list items:
Obamacare subsidies expiring
The main sticking point that kept the record-long government shutdown going for as long as it did was the demand from Democrats to secure an extension for the enhanced Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire at the end of this year.
The tax subsidies Democrats are demanding to extend permanently are enhanced tax credits that were created in 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic and approved in the American Rescue Plan of 2021 under former President Joe Biden. The credits were given an expiration date in 2022, but that was later extended to the end of 2025 through the Inflation Reduction Act.
If those lapse, millions of Americans could see their health care premiums go up.
As part of an agreement to reopen the government, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., promised he would give Democrats a vote on extending the subsidies. That vote is expected as early as next week, but details of what the extension could look like is still unclear.
While Senate Democrats have been open to a yearlong extension to buy time for a more permanent fix, there are others in the party who want to permanently extend those enhanced tax credits. That won’t fly with Senate Republicans, who will be needed to pass any deal.
Meanwhile, a group of Senate Republicans are working on another plan to eliminate the enhanced Obamacare subsidies altogether and replace them with flexible savings accounts, which are usually offered by companies and allow employees to set aside pre-tax dollars to use for out-of-pocket health care expenses.
On the House side, some Republicans are taking measures into their own hands. A group of centrist Republicans are readying a plan for a temporary extension despite Democrats in the lower chamber plowing ahead with their own proposal for a three-year extension.
Any final deal would likely need to earn the endorsement of President Donald Trump — who has been back-and-forth on the issue. The president last week signaled he would back a temporary extension of the subsidies with tighter restrictions before quickly reversing course due to GOP opposition.
Trump’s stance is currently unclear as the president suggests he doesn’t want to extend the credits but will if it’s necessary.
The only thing lawmakers do know: Time is not their friend, so they’ll need to get something worked out quickly.
Annual military funding framework
Lawmakers are expected to begin rolling out the text of the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual framework that dictates how the military can spend its money for the upcoming fiscal year.
Legislation could be published as early as this week.
It’s important to note this annual bill is separate from the full-year defense spending bill, although the two work hand in hand.
The NDAA outlines the policies and provisions that the Defense Department can spend money on by establishing certain limits and minimum requirements. The bill acts as a framework that authorizes the spending levels of the Pentagon.
Those levels include how much can be spent on pay raises, weapons programs, policy changes and more.
The defense spending bill then uses that blueprint to approve the actual money. Appropriators use that bill to allocate how much money goes to each branch to satisfy the requirements and limits laid out in the NDAA.
Lawmakers are likely to finalize the NDAA first before they leave town for Christmas, although details of that bill could wait until the end of this week or beginning of next week to be made public. Top party leaders will then need to act swiftly to get it through both chambers.
Spending bills
The defense spending bill is one of the nine remaining appropriations bills that still must be finalized and passed by Congress. Those bills have a later deadline and don’t need to be finished until Jan. 30.
But appropriations is a lengthy and complicated process. It typically takes appropriators the entire year to hash out and finalize the details for the next fiscal calendar — and as we’ve seen, it more often than not takes longer than the original timeline.
As a result, appropriators are hoping to get a jump-start on their next fiscal package and bring it to the floor for votes before they leave town Dec. 19. It’s an ambitious goal, but not necessarily impossible.
Congress passed its first appropriations package when the government was reopened on Nov. 12, which included the bills for the legislative branch, the Agriculture Department, and military construction and Veterans Affairs. But several remain, including some of the most historically difficult to negotiate such as the Labor-Health and Human Services-and-Education bill.
That one usually results in the most partisan fights due to its oversight over agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Education Department. That means issues like public health, abortion rules, student aid and more are debated before the legislation is approved.
Another tough spending bill is the one funding Homeland Security, which deals with border security, immigration laws, and funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
It’s not yet clear which bills will be in another mini spending package by the end of this month, but appropriators are likely to continue meeting to hash out those details sooner rather than later.
Any spending measure that is proposed must go through both the House and Senate before making it to Trump’s desk for his signature.