Congress Is Back: What To Watch

Via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Following the holiday break, Congress returns this week with a lot to do. 

On the top of the agenda is funding the government to avert a government shutdown on Jan. 30. 

Lawmakers are also expected to take up a resolution related to President Donald Trump’s military action in Venezuela over the weekend, which included the capture of the Venezuelan leader.  

The Senate is expected to return Monday afternoon, with the House to follow on Tuesday. 

Here is what Congress will be dealing with when it returns.

A 43-day government shutdown—the longest in U.S. history—ended in November after a Senate bill put together by a bipartisan coalition passed Congress. 

The government is currently funded through Jan. 30.

The legislation included three of the 12 full-year appropriations bills and a measure to fund the rest of the government through the end of January. It also included the promise of a vote on extending the ACA’s Covid-era subsidies, a vote that ended in failure in the Senate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has repeatedly said that the short-term funding bill was to allow appropriators to finish their work on year-long appropriations bills. With three passed, nine remain to be considered by Congress. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that Democrats are not looking to force another government shutdown.

“As of Jan. 1, that is a different time than before because the ACA [subsidies] expired,” Schumer told Punchbowl News.

“On the other hand, we’d like to get an appropriations bill done. That’s a Jan. 30 deadline … We’re trying to work with the Republicans to get it done.”

The House will vote on a bill to extend the Covid-era ACA subsidies for three years with no strings attached.

The vote is due to a handful of Republicans signing onto a discharge petition organized by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), going around House GOP leadership and forcing a vote.

The subsidies expired on Dec. 31.

The failure of an earlier draft of a bill related to ACA subsidies in the Senate suggests that this bill could struggle in the upper chamber if it were to pass the House. 

Though the issue was the driving force behind the 43-day government shutdown in 2025, Democratic senators have indicated that they’re not looking to restart the shutdown over the issue. 

This is lawmakers’ first time on Capitol Hill since Trump’s military action in Venezuela, and some senators are already mulling a response. 

The early morning operation in and around Caracas, carried out around 2 a.m. local time on Jan. 3, resulted in the capture of both Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife, and included a series of airstrikes on strategic targets, including infrastructure, ports, cell towers, and others.

Specifically, the Senate is set to consider a resolution under the War Powers Act introduced by Schumer and Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). 

The measure would block the administration from engaging in further military action in Venezuela. 

It’s privileged, meaning that Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) can’t block it. To pass the Senate, it would need only a simple majority. 

With Paul expected to back the resolution, three other Republicans would need to sign on to pass the bill. 

Under the War Powers Act, identical language would need to be approved by both chambers to pass the bill. 

Since the 116th Congress, lawmakers have long been pursuing a bill to ban stock trading by members of the body. 

Now, supporters of a congressional stock trading ban seem closer than ever to achieving that goal—but multiple competing proposals and issues around the legislation remain unresolved. 

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), a longtime proponent of the ban, is expected to pursue a discharge petition to force a vote on her own version of the bill. Currently, that push has 74 backers—well short of the 218 it needs to bypass House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.). 

According to a post on X by the Florida Republican, House leadership has committed to a vote on “comprehensive legislation to address congressional stock trading,” but she plans to leave her discharge petition open until that promise is met. 

Democrats, meanwhile, have pushed to include the president in the ban—a proposal that Republicans have pushed against. 

A lesser issue hanging over the Senate will be the hundreds of executive nominees put forward by Trump who have yet to be confirmed. 

Ahead of the winter recess, the Senate confirmed a tranche of 97 of these nominees. 

The vote fits into a broader power dispute between Senate Democrats and the White House over nominees.

Historically, the president’s picks for lower executive branch positions have been confirmed by the upper chamber through unanimous voice votes, allowing dozens or hundreds of nominees to be quickly confirmed in minimal time.

Since Trump reclaimed the White House, however, Democrats have broken from this precedent, using a variety of Senate parliamentary measures and traditions to slow the confirmation of lower-level appointees to a crawl.

Primarily, lawmakers have withheld their support for unanimous consent confirmations, instead using the full amount of time for debate allowed under the Senate’s rules for every nominee. This means that nominations previously confirmed by the dozens can take an entire legislative day to work through.

With hundreds of lesser nominees waiting to be confirmed, the Senate is expected to continue working through the issue after returning from the break.