A lame-duck Congress starts Monday with a shutdown clock, a $1.5 trillion defense fight, and two parties that can barely stand each other

Congress returns to work Monday with a pile of unfinished business that would be daunting in any year, made stranger by the fact that the party about to lose its majority must negotiate with the party about to gain one, all before December 11, when federal funding runs out and the lights start going off.

Both chambers of Congress are scheduled to return to Washington on November 9 for the lame-duck session. The first deadline is December 11, when the stopgap funding bill enacted in September expires, and failing to replace it would trigger the fourth government shutdown of President Donald Trump's second term.

The session opens with Republicans still holding every gavel. Democrats won in November. That gap, between who commands the floor and who commands the future, is the central tension of the next six weeks on Capitol Hill.

Who runs what, and for how long

Democrats decisively won control of the House and Senate, but Republicans are still in charge until next year, and Congress has until December 11 to pass a bill to fund the government. Even if Democrats win one or both chambers, Trump retains veto power and broad executive authority, limiting Democrats' ability to enact major legislation.

Before Democrats can do much of anything, Republicans have their own immediate crisis: they need a new House leader. Speaker Mike Johnson told his staff in a phone call that he will not stay on as Republican leader in the new Congress. House Republicans must choose their leader on November 10, with Majority Leader Steve Scalise and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan running to replace Johnson. The outcome will determine who negotiates the funding bill with Democrats during the lame duck and who leads the minority afterward.

Republicans in both the Senate and House will hold their leadership contests on November 10, just a week after a high-stakes Election Day. The top question for the GOP will be whether they continue to support current Senate Majority Leader John Thune and Speaker Johnson if Democrats retake either chamber.

On the Democratic side, the succession picture is cleaner. After helping deliver a decisive victory for House Democrats in the midterm elections, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., appears all but certain to become the first Black lawmaker to be elected speaker of the House. Jeffries officially declared his bid for the speaker's gavel after Democrats gained a large majority in the chamber, and in his letter listed immediate priorities such as undoing Republicans' food stamp and Medicaid policies, as well as ending President Trump's tariffs and the war with Iran. House Democratic leadership elections are set for November 18.

The spending crunch

A stopgap law signed September 2 funds federal agencies through Friday, December 11, 2026. Congress has not passed a single one of the 12 annual appropriations bills. That means the lame duck must either produce a full omnibus, combining all twelve, or yet another stopgap, or the government shuts down the following Saturday morning.

The main fight is over defense: the Trump administration wants a record $1.5 trillion, which Senate Democrats reject. Congress can pass an omnibus, one bill combining all 12 spending bills, or another short-term extension.

Since Democrats will have a lot more power in the next Congress, House sources say they will only agree to a brief continuing resolution, probably for two or three months at most. The fact that Trump needs the CR to keep many of his projects going gives Democrats a fair amount of power, even in the lame-duck session.

One Democratic member-elect is already staking out a position on a narrower fight inside the spending bill. Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., fresh off his reelection this week, said Thursday that he will press for a 2027 pay raise for federal workers to be part of any deal to keep the government open past December 11. Walkinshaw told reporters his starting point will be the 4.1% average pay increase proposed in his Federal Adjustment of Income Rates Act. Leaders of federal employee unions said Wednesday they would push Congress to unwind policies attacking their collective bargaining rights and to secure a pay raise, both in next week's lame-duck session and next year when Democrats take control.

The defense bill's 65-year streak at risk

Separate from the spending bill is the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which sets Pentagon policy. It has never failed to pass in 65 years. This year may test that.

The annual defense policy bill heads into the post-election lame-duck session with no Senate floor vote and no agreed plan for the Pentagon's budget. The House passed H.R. 8800 on July 22, 2026, 216 to 212, authorizing a $1.15 trillion FY2027 defense policy bill. The Senate never voted on it.

For 65 straight years the NDAA has passed Congress on a bipartisan basis, but this year it barely passed the House, where more Republicans voted against it than Democrats voted for it, and it did not clear the Senate at all. The $1.5 trillion plan, in addition to replenishing depleted weaponry, directs billions toward Trump's projects, including a "Golden Dome" missile defense shield and a fleet of battleships named after him.

Cloture on the motion to proceed failed 50 to 46 on July 14; a motion to reconsider remains pending. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also asked for an additional $67 billion for the Iran conflict and other operations, a request nearly all Senate Democrats blocked.

Democrats say the overall defense spending request must be cut by hundreds of billions of dollars and the bill must include guardrails on President Trump's Iran war, while the Pentagon is doubling down on its $1.5 trillion budget request.

"Republicans do not have 60 votes in the Senate for any kind of appropriations bill," said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. If budget negotiations stall until January, when the 120th Congress is sworn in, Democrats could potentially boost funds for nondefense priorities while reining in defense spending to well below the $1.5 trillion level the Trump administration was targeting.

Hegseth, the debt ceiling, and everything else

The spending and defense fights do not exhaust the calendar. An early test in the lame-duck session is the likely impeachment of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as soon as that session convenes on or shortly after November 9. Senate Democrats are quietly floating Hegseth's ouster after the November 3 election as the political price for cooperation on defense bills in the lame duck, and may have some GOP support.

The debt limit is also on the table, though it is not a December emergency. Senate Majority Leader John Thune has said a debt-limit increase could come in the lame duck. The limit could be reached as soon as February 2027. Republicans are weighing a debt-limit increase before Democrats take over, which would remove a borrowing deadline that analysts say could arrive in early to mid-2027 as a source of leverage against Trump.

The farm bill expired on September 30, and the surveillance authority known as FISA Section 702 has been lapsed since June. Both are candidates for year-end action. Senate Democrats will also have to decide next week whether they're ready to advance a bipartisan permitting reform bill or hold off until next year, when their political situation will improve dramatically.

Top Democrats on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees have already announced plans to use their incoming subpoena power to probe the Trump administration and its allies.

This lame-duck session could be the last weeks of unified Republican control of Congress and the White House. Five working weeks, Thanksgiving in the middle, and almost no margin for error.

What to Watch

• November 10, House GOP leadership vote: Whether Steve Scalise or Jim Jordan wins the minority leader post shapes how Republicans negotiate the December 11 spending deadline, and who carries the party standard into 2027.
• November 18, House Democratic leadership elections: Jeffries' speaker nomination is expected to be uncontested inside the caucus, but watch whether progressive members of the expanded left flank demand committee chairmanships as their price of loyalty.
• Hegseth impeachment timeline: "If Hegseth resigns now in the lame-duck session, the Senate, while it's still under Republican control, has time to confirm a new SECDEF," one defense analyst told Breaking Defense. Whether Republicans join that push, or block an impeachment trial, is the week's other live wire.
• December 11 shutdown clock: With no full-year spending bills done and a defense-spending gap of hundreds of billions of dollars separating the two parties, another short-term continuing resolution is the most likely outcome, meaning the real fight over fiscal year 2027 carries into the new Democratic Congress in January.
• Debt limit gambit: Watch whether Thune moves a debt-ceiling increase before January 3. If he does, it removes one of the new Democratic majority's sharpest tools against the White House.

Sources: HNGN / Sarah Lee | STAT News | Semafor | Breaking Defense | NDAA.ai | Buffalo Chronicle | Roll Call | Bloomberg Government | NPR | The Washington Times / AP | The American Prospect | No Labels | Government Executive