Republicans in Congress are weighing a last-minute partisan package that could stuff together Iran war funding, a debt limit increase and other priorities before Democrats take control of the House and Senate. The push comes in the narrow window before the next Congress is seated and while government funding runs out on Dec. 11.
That timing is why people are asking when does the new Congress get sworn in. The answer matters now because lawmakers have only a few weeks left in session before year-end, and the current Congress still has to move money for the government and the annual Pentagon policy bill. Republicans are trying to use that stretch to move legislation on their own terms before the balance of power flips.
The scope under discussion is broad. GOP lawmakers have floated a catch-all reconciliation bill that could include billions in funding for the Iran war, a debt ceiling increase, voting restrictions, crypto measures and hemp policy. One reason the idea has gained traction is that a partisan reconciliation bill would let Republicans raise the debt limit without bargaining with Democrats when the government hits that ceiling.
Bernie Moreno, one of the Republican voices pressing the idea, said in October that if his party lost control of Congress, “it’ll be the Last Supper.” He added that Republicans should be in Washington from Nov. 9 until Dec. 31 with no break at all, and said the goal would be “a giant reconciliation bill where we take all the Republican priorities that we can get done.”
The friction is hard to miss. Republicans are discussing a sweeping party-line package even as voters handed Democrats control of the House and Senate on Tuesday, and the window before the new Congress is short. Ron Johnson, who became chair of the Senate Budget Committee in July, said in September that the GOP reconciliation bill should be “bigger and better” after the election, with military and immigration spending, a debt limit increase, fraud-reduction measures and election integrity provisions folded in.
That leaves the lame-duck session as the last chance for Republicans to act without unified Democratic control, and the timing could turn on how much they want to cram into the final days of the 119th Congress. If they move fast enough, the package could become the defining fight of the post-election stretch; if they do not, the next Congress will inherit the bills, the deadlines and the leverage.
