WASHINGTON — As lawmakers return to Capitol Hill this week, they’ll be faced immediately with a number of deadlines and outstanding agenda items that did not get completed before the holiday season. And they won’t have much time to waste.
But first, lawmakers will need to deal with the reverberations from the U.S. attack against Venezuela over the weekend that resulted in the capture and arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife. Top party leaders were briefed by Trump administration officials on Monday evening, but rank-and-file lawmakers — particularly Democrats — are demanding briefings of their own in the coming weeks.
Republicans have had mixed reactions to the strikes in Venezuela as lawmakers were not notified ahead of time despite only Congress holding the power to declare war. The administration has called the incursion a law enforcement action.
Top Republicans said they were not given advance notice of the attack, but noted they were satisfied with the notification shortly after the strikes were carried out.
“Notification of Congress in advance of really critical and hypersensitive missions, to me, seems ill advised,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said on Monday. “I felt that the notification, considering the scope of the mission was sufficient.”
Another shutdown?
Meanwhile, lawmakers’ biggest task for the month of January will be avoiding another shutdown at the end of the month.
With just four working weeks until the next government funding deadline, appropriators are facing a time crunch to finish the final nine spending bills to approve the 2026 fiscal year budget. Top lawmakers had hoped to make progress on those before leaving town for the winter break, but those plans were scuttled due to policy disagreements between and within both parties.
The government is scheduled to shut down at midnight on Jan. 30, after which funding will lapse for a slew of federal agencies. The House is in session for only 12 days before that deadline, and the Senate for 15.
A potential shutdown would only close the government partially as lawmakers passed three spending bills at the end of the record-long closure in November. But it would still pose problems as thousands of government workers would once again be furloughed and some federal operations would come to a halt.
Party leaders have yet to come to an agreement on a topline number, meaning the total amount of money that will be approved in the final budget. That number is often the most difficult detail in negotiations as fiscal conservatives press for deep cuts that are nonstarters for more moderate and progressive members.
However, lawmakers made significant progress after releasing three of the proposal spending bills on Monday morning to be considered in one package known as a “minibus.” The nearly $180 billion bill would fund Commerce-Justice-Science, Interior-Environment and Energy-Water bills for the rest of the fiscal year.
Lying underneath the shutdown fight is a whole other variable that, although separate, could play a major role in spending talks: healthcare policy.
Congress adjourned in December without passing legislation addressing the COVID-era enhanced Obamacare subsidies, resulting in their expiration on Thursday at the start of the new year. But there’s been plenty of movement from all corners of Capitol Hill on how to avoid drastic spending increases for those who rely on the tax credits, with lawmakers privately viewing the end of the month as the actual point of no return.
The House will vote on a clean three-year extension when it returns after a handful of centrist Republicans rebelled against GOP leadership to sign on to a petition forcing a vote on the measure. If those GOP moderates remain in line with Democrats, the bill will likely pass the House — but its future in the Senate is unclear.
A similar three-year extension already failed to pass the Senate in December.
But the bill has kickstarted bipartisan negotiations between senators and House members to consider different options. One suggestion under consideration is to pass the House petition for a three-year clean extension, but later replace that language in the Senate with a more concrete framework, according to a lawmaker involved in the talks.
That final package would likely extend the tax credits temporarily while also including tighter enrollment eligibility requirements to satisfy Republican demands.
Details of a plan are not yet finalized, but lawmakers are likely to continue bipartisan talks throughout the week.
Aside from the January deadlines, party leaders have other daunting tasks ahead: the midterm elections. Republicans will need to defend their slim majorities in both the House and Senate in a high-stakes election that could take up much of the focus of 2026.