Lame-duck Congress has slew of measures to consider before January

By Karoun Demirjian

Monday, Nov. 15, 2010 | 2 a.m.

Lame-duck sessions, despite the pejorative name, shouldn’t automatically be written off. But when lawmakers make their return to Washington today, they may not be in store for much more than a limp to the finish.

Democrats are still in charge of both houses of the current Congress, and with the pressure of the elections now off, it arguably could be easier than ever for leaders to flex the political muscle of their sizable majorities. But even with that setup, they’re still going to be operating under the specter of Congress yet to come.

On Jan. 3, the speaker’s gavel goes to Republican Rep. John Boehner, whose bumper crop of House-flipping freshmen will be going through orientation in the Capitol this week, just steps away from the lawmakers trying to complete their session.

That leaves Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and his outgoing House counterpart Rep. Nancy Pelosi, with a choice of how to best use the few weeks they have left: Slam through as much of what remains of the Democrats’ agenda while they still have two strong majorities, or set a conciliatory tone, with the hopes of creating camaraderie that could trickle into the next Congress.

Reid has spoken in the dialect of compromise since he successfully emerged from a re-election contest dominated by partisan rancor, claiming “the American people want us to work together.”

But Republican leaders have insisted that, in the next Congress at least, cooperation will depend on Democrats’ willingness to acquiesce to demands of the GOP, whose leaders have dubbed themselves the true spokesmen of the populace since the election.

The tone for the lame duck will likely be set this week, when Democrats clarify what sort of compromise they’re prepared to swallow on the extension of Bush-era tax cuts. Despite pleas from more conservative members of the party — many of whom lost re-election — Obama refused to parley on extending tax cuts any further than the middle class, defined as income levels up to $250,000, before November.

Democratic leaders maintain they will not accept a permanent extension of the tax cuts. But since the party’s midterm drubbing, the president and Reid have left the door open to one compromise: a temporary extension of the full tax-cut scheme.

Taxes, however, won’t even be first on the agenda.

It’s more likely that the Senate will start today with some bills that have languished on the back burner. Before Congress disbanded, Reid filed procedural motions on a bill to promote natural gas and electric vehicle use, and two measures that cleared the House long ago: a food safety bill and a bill to address paycheck disparity between men and women.

That means it could actually be awhile until the contentious fights make their way to the floor.

House leaders have announced they don’t plan to tackle any of the big bills on the lame-duck agenda this week — taxes, immigration or unemployment.

On those issues, it’s likely the Senate that will make the first move. But the longer Reid waits, the more difficult it’s going to be.

Reid returns with the close-but-no-cigar 59-member majority he’s had to manipulate around filibuster threats — which can only be cleared with a 60-vote supermajority — for much of the current Congress. The fate of most bills have depended on Reid’s ability to hold his party in line, and then persuade one of a small group of moderate Republicans to cross the aisle: Maine Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, and Ohio Sen. George Voinovich.

That job gets one vote harder after Thanksgiving, when newly elected Sen. Mark Kirk, a Republican from Illinois, is expected to be sworn into the seat formerly held by the president, and occupied these last two years by stand-in appointee Roland Burris.

Some fights are likely to be easier than others. There is some bipartisan support, for instance, for a measure to set a national renewable energy standard of 15 percent for the year 2021, a threshold several state laws have surpassed. And if Democrats agree to a temporary extension of the tax cuts, that is likely to draw enough Republican support to clear a filibuster even though party leaders say they will keep pressing for a permanent extension.

But in other fights, the outcome isn’t so clear. One must-pass measure, the defense authorization bill, fell flat in September when Republicans held rank in a procedural filibuster. They protested that Democrats were trying to use it as a rider for two controversial bills: a repeal of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” ban on gays serving openly in the military, and the DREAM Act, which would put some undocumented immigrants who entered the country as children and are now enrolled in college or the military on a pathway to citizenship.

Gay and immigrant advocates are trying to press Reid to take another stab at that sort of package deal. But while the majority leader has clearly stated his support for a repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” he’s not committing to bringing it up for a vote. Neither has he promised to attach the DREAM Act to the military funding measure; although Reid has promised to bring the measure up for consideration, likely as a stand-alone bill. That would almost certainly worsen the immigration measure’s chances of passing, but certainly make the defense authorization bill easier to swallow for Republicans.

Those scenarios are all but guaranteed to frustrate progressive advocates, who have been clamoring for Democrats to make a strong showing in their final weeks in charge by hammering through legislation that won’t stand much of a chance under Republican leadership.

The outgoing Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman, Sen. Robert Menendez, has been leading the push to put comprehensive immigration reform on such a calendar; other sweeping liberal measures that have been run through the rumor mill include the pro-labor union Employee Free Choice Act and the Employment Nondiscrimination Act.

But whatever Reid and Pelosi settle on as a philosophical swan song, many of the decisions on bills may just come down to practicality: They only have so much time.

Congress has several other items left on its docket. There’s a cost-of-living adjustment to Social Security. Reid has promised to bring up a stand-alone measure to award an extra $250 to recipients who won’t be seeing their checks increase because of low inflation.

Then there’s a rewrite of the 1099 tax reporting requirements under the health care bill, which presently require businesses to report every expense over $600. Sen. Max Baucus announced last week that he would drop a bill tackling that provision, which has been a lightning rod for criticism of the health care bill.

Congress could pass a bill to further extend unemployment benefits by 20 weeks for states such as Nevada that haven’t managed to climb out of the recession. And the Senate still has to ratify the new Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty that Obama signed with Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev earlier this year.