The House and Senate are due to return to Washington on Monday with a crowded legislative agenda in the final weeks before the end of the 119th Congress.
Congress will need to act quickly to extend government funding, which expires Dec. 11. Lawmakers will need to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, and they may tackle ambitious proposals including a construction permitting package and a bill to regulate name, image and likeness rules in college sports.
The work will commence under a new dynamic. Republicans come back to the Capitol diminished after suffering substantial losses in this week's midterms. Democrats swept to a commanding majority in the House with at least 255 seats in the 435-member chamber and could emerge with as many as 56 seats in the Senate.
With majorities in both chambers looming, Democrats will have little incentive to cut deals with their GOP counterparts.
Some lawmakers, including Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., have called for Congress to raise the debt limit before Republicans lose control.
In September, the federal debt hit $40 trillion for the first time, bumping up against the $41.1 trillion ceiling written into the GOP's 2025 budget reconciliation law known as the "one big beautiful bill."
The Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit that tracks the debt limit, said Treasury is likely to hit its maximum borrowing capacity by mid-summer. The U.S. may no longer be able to meet all its obligations by November 2027, according to a Bank of America estimate from Nov. 6.
But Democrats may instead prefer to use the debt limit as a bargaining chip in the next Congress.
Republicans could theoretically raise the debt ceiling in a budget reconciliation package, as they did with their 2025 law. But cobbling together a post-election coalition to clear another reconciliation bill with exceptionally narrow margins would be difficult. Budget reconciliation, which allows party-line bills to skirt the filibuster in the Senate, requires near-total unity.
Congressional leadership, particularly on the Republican side, is likely to have difficulty with lawmaker attendance after dozens of members lost their seats in an electoral bloodbath. Leadership will also struggle to whip members into line, especially those who do not have another election to run.
Top senators on energy committees struck a deal on a permitting bill before the election. That accord to make construction easier could now be in jeopardy, though the Senate plans to hold a procedural vote to advance it Monday evening, according to a Senate aide familiar with the schedule. The person asked not to be named because the move has not been announced.
The resounding majorities Democrats won in both the House and Senate may give them incentive to torpedo the permitting deal in hopes of securing a better one later. The deal also may have been in trouble prior to the election, with top Democrats in the House not supporting the version their counterparts in the Senate accepted.
Politico reported Thursday that Democratic Minority Leader and likely next House Speaker Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., did not support the permitting deal.
Lawmakers have long sought, and failed to reach, a bipartisan, bicameral deal on permitting reform. Democrats want to speed up the buildout of clean energy. Republicans have long complained that the federal permitting process and environmental laws that comprise it stymie the U.S.'s ability to build critical infrastructure.
Defense spending
The House passed a version of the NDAA, which would authorize more than $1 trillion in defense spending, in July. But Senate Democrats blocked their chamber's version of the bill that same month over concerns about the Iran war.
"Donald Trump is dragging America deeper into a war in Iran with no authorization, no plan, and no exit strategy. Democrats will not go along," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement at the time.
The NDAA is typically seen as a must-pass, bipartisan bill.
The legislation as it stood in July also drew pushback from businesses over a provision that would restrict Pentagon contractors from executing stock buybacks and paying dividends unless they have the Defense Department's approval.
A new wrinkle threatens to derail the NDAA process during the lame duck, however. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faces a vote on articles of impeachment upon Congress' return, and Democrats have already been highly skeptical of the Pentagon's asks in this year's budget as the expensive Iran war drags on.
NIL and stocks
Other priorities could also get floor time.
The Senate in September approved, in a bipartisan vote, a package that would establish federal rules for the ways in which college athletes are compensated. But that legislation has many opponents in the House, particularly among Democrats in the chamber, making its passage more complicated.
There's also been a yearslong effort to ban members of Congress from owning or trading individual stocks.
In previous Congresses, the effort was stymied by leadership from both parties. And more recently, a bipartisan push to pass legislation was derailed after House Democrats demanded the ban also apply to the president.
One GOP-led proposal, called the Stop Insider Trading Act, passed the House with some bipartisan support in July, but met with Democratic opposition because it would apply only to Congress and would not require lawmakers to divest existing holdings.
Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., called for action on the issue in an X post Thursday. Young is a co-sponsor of the Senate version of the Stop Insider Trading Act.
"We have a great opportunity in the lame duck session to restore a small amount of trust by banning Members of Congress from trading stocks. I've been talking about this for many months, and it should be a no-brainer," Young said.
Democrats, however, are eager to claim a victory on congressional stock trading in the next Congress.
Jeffries, in a letter to fellow House members announcing his candidacy for speaker, listed it as a priority as part of Democrats' anti-corruption agenda.
"We must root out corrupt price gouging, clean up the mess at the Supreme Court and ban Members of Congress from trading stocks. Accountability begins at home," Jeffries wrote.
