YESTERDAY MARKED the beginning of the end of the 111th Congress, a lame duck session overloaded with deadlines and unfinished business and fraught with the possibility of embarrassing climbdowns for President Barack Obama.
Extending the Bush era tax cuts, ratifying the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) with Russia and repealing the military’s “don’t ask don’t tell” policy are just a few of the issues that Mr Obama would like to see resolved before the final session of the Democratic-controlled Congress ends around December 10th.
But the emboldened Republicans, who took at least 60 House seats and six Senate seats in the November 2nd midterms, may prefer to stall legislation until the 112th Congress convenes on January 5th.
The beginning of the trial of the once powerful Representative Charles Rangel from New York yesterday seemed to symbolise the humiliation of the Democrats. Mr Rangel (70), a member of the House for 40 years, has been under investigation by the ethics committee for two years.
The panel has charged Mr Rangel with 13 counts of financial misdeeds, most of which involve failing to pay his taxes. He was until this year chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee – which raises taxes.
Yesterday, Mr Rangel said he had not had enough time or money to secure legal counsel. He accused the ethics committee of rushing to complete his trial before the end of the lame duck session, and walked out.
Tomorrow, the Democrats will announce their minority leadership for the incoming Congress. Nancy Pelosi (70), the outgoing Speaker, has been criticised for seizing the position of minority leader after her party’s historic defeat.
Her numbers two and three, Steny Hoyer (71) and Jim Clyburn (70), will continue as minority whip and assistant leader. It was, wrote Dana Milbank in the Washington Post,"the preschool soccer theory of accountability: Nobody keeps score and everybody gets a trophy."
On Thursday, the Republicans are expected to choose Representative John Boehner as the new Speaker of the House. Eric Cantor of Virginia is in line to become the majority leader.
Leaders from both parties will then meet with Mr Obama at the White House, in the hope of hammering out a programme for the last weeks of the year.
At a minimum, the lame duck session must pass a budget resolution to enable the government to continue to function through the winter. The current “continuing resolution” will expire on December 2nd. Benefits for the long-term unemployed expire on November 30th, while the “Bush tax cuts”, originally passed in 2001 and 2003, are scheduled to end on December 31st.
The tax cuts are the most contentious issue, and could monopolise the last weeks of this Congress. Both parties say it’s important to extend tax cuts for the middle class. Mr Obama wanted to end tax cuts for individuals earning more than $200,000 and families with more than $250,000 in annual income, thus saving $700 billion in deficit spending.
But Republicans have labelled the measure “class warfare”, claim it would penalise small businesses, and demand a permanent extension of all tax cuts for everyone. Democratic senator Charles Schumer has proposed extending the tax cuts, except for people earning $1 million or more.
The White House looks likely to compromise and accept a two- or three-year extension for everyone. It would be "the biggest scandal of all", wrote E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post, if this Congress, still nominally under Democratic control, extended tax cuts for millionaires but failed to renew unemployment benefits.
Mr Obama told the Russian president Dmitry Medvedev at the weekend that ratification of Start, which both men signed last April in Prague, was his top foreign priority in the lame duck session. The treaty would reduce deployed nuclear warheads to 1,550 on both sides. It has been held up by Republican senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, who demands more than the $180 billion already budgeted for nuclear weapons over the next decade.
In a Pentagon report to be published on December 1st, 70 per cent of the half million military personnel surveyed said they saw little or no risk in allowing gay men and women to openly serve in the military.
But the Republican senator John McCain, also from Arizona, is trying to cut from the defence authorisation Bill an amendment that would repeal “don’t ask don’t tell”.