If there’s one thing Republicans are anxious to wrap up this Christmas, it’s the 118th Congress. But before they can put a bow on the failed majority of Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Joe Biden’s disaster of a presidency, they have a mountain of business to finish — and, thanks to Senate Democrats, very little time to do it.

Members will start to feel the holiday squeeze as early as this week when the slog over government funding begins in earnest. That’s one of the legislative hurdles the two sides will have to clear before jetting home. In total, Congress wants to check off four major tasks before the snow (and leaders) fly, FRC’s Quena Gonzalez outlined: “1. fund the government into next spring so President Trump and a GOP Congress can set priorities for the rest of the year, 2. deal with the farm bill that’s expiring, 3. pass the National Defense Reauthorization Act (NDAA), and 4. adjourn before Christmas.”

On government funding, which is usually what gums up December, both sides are “making progress,” Schumer told the press, hinting at another short-term continuing resolution (CR) that would keep the lights on after Congress locks up for Christmas. But, he warned, “We need to keep divisive and unnecessary provisions out of any government funding extension,” a not-so-veiled threat to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to scrap the victories Republicans celebrated in their version of the bill earlier this year. 

The current CR runs out on December 20, a date Johnson knows “will come quickly.” But again, all of this eleventh-hour drama could have been avoided, he told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “This Week on the Hill,” if Democrats had bothered to do their job. “The problem is that [Senate Majority Leader] Chuck Schumer didn’t put appropriations bills on the floor of the Senate. Both chambers of Congress have a responsibility to fund the government. [The] 12 separate appropriations bills are supposed to go through regular order in a long process to make their way to the floor. The House did our work. The Senate did not. Plain and simple. They didn’t even pass one single appropriations bill. So that’s why we’re in the situation that we are in.”

Now that their backs are against the wall, Schumer seems ready to wheel and deal. “We’re building consensus on the approach to that,” the speaker explained. “What probably will wind up happening is because we’re running out of time and the Senate is not negotiating with us in good faith, is that we’ll have to do a continuing resolution, a CR, to push the funding decisions into the first part of next year. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than accepting a Christmas omnibus bill that Chuck Schumer likes to do to the House almost every year,” which, as most Americans know by now, is the Democrats’ way of cramming billions of dollars of bloated projects, earmarks, and waste into the budget at the last minute.

“We’re not going to do that,” Johnson insisted. “We broke that fever last year. We’re not going to do it this year. So if it requires us handling some of these matters in early January and the early part of next year, we’ll do that because it’s a better alternative. Then we will be, of course, under the control of [a] unified government with the Republican Party. And we’ll be able to put our stamp more on some of those spending bills. And that will begin the reforms that begin in earnest for that first 100 days of the new Congress, where we have to change everything.”

As usual, that idea won’t win any popularity contests with hardline conservatives. Just this past Monday, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) lamented the thought of another status quo proposal — no matter how protracted it may be.

“It will probably be a two- or three-month CR,” he explained to “Washington Watch” guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice, “which means that you keep all the spending at the same levels. You keep all the programs alive that are there now. And that includes things like funding to Planned Parenthood, funding to [the] World Health Organization … all of those things that I’m totally against. I don’t want to see that, but I think that’s what’s going to happen.” In his mind, “[It would ] be nice to start with a clean slate,” but Biggs is also realistic. “I don’t believe that my colleagues have that in them to do [at this late date].”

Still, it should come as a comforting thought that whenever this funding bridge expires, Republicans will be in a much stronger position to impose their will with control of the House, Senate, and White House. A short-term CR “is the best of the two not-great alternatives,” Johnson pointed out. “That’s the least damaging.” In football terms, he underscored that the GOP is playing “goal-line defense on this spending bill for the current year that goes forward. And once we do that, we stop them at the goal line. Then, beginning next year … we finally begin to play offense again and move the ball all the way back up the field. And we have big plans to do that. It’s going to be a very aggressive agenda.”

In the meantime, another major clash is fast approaching with the must-pass NDAA. As outgoing leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) fumed in a Tuesday op-ed, Republicans finished their work on the legislation back in June and handed it off to Schumer with “months to spare.” Now, in three weeks, the two sides will have to iron out 1,400 pages of differences in military and defense policy if they want to keep the decades-old streak of passing the NDAA alive.

As usual, one of the biggest flashpoints will be cultural issues. Incredibly, in-vitro fertilization (IVF) became a landmine in the troop bill when Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs (Calif.) managed to radically expand the policy so that taxpayers would be forced to fund — not just injured servicemembers’ IVF — but any servicemembers’ IVF (active-duty or not) and their dependents’ procedures as well. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, took their failed, so-called “Right to IVF Act,” and jammed it into the NDAA, where it could legalize human cloning, gene-editing, the creation of three-parent embryos, the creation of animal-human hybrids, commercial gestational surrogacy, and the buying, selling, and destruction of human embryos. And unfortunately, the way the two chambers will be forced to haphazardly decide these issues — up against the buzzer in conference — means anything could happen.

FRC’s Mary Szoch pointed to the very real dangers of such a policy to TWS. “The millions of children born as the result of IVF are an incredible blessing to their families and society. While we acknowledge that truth, we must also recognize that millions of lives have been lost through the process of IVF, and so, expanding IVF coverage in TRICARE through the NDAA is morally problematic for a number of reasons — first and foremost, this expansion will result in the routine, taxpayer-funded destruction of human embryos. Best estimates show that only 2.3% of the embryonic children created through IVF make it to a live birth — meaning over 97% percent do not make it to a live birth.”

Sadly, she explained, “Though parents spend thousands of dollars doing IVF, the process does nothing to address the underlying cause of infertility, so it’s not shocking that it is only successful about 23% of the time. There are better options out there,” Szoch emphasized. “Restorative reproductive medicine actually looks for the underlying cause of infertility and treats it — and results in the birth of a child over 60% of the time.” And the reality is, “The IVF industry is completely unregulated, and nothing is done to ensure that the wishes and rights of parents are respected. Expanding taxpayer funding in the NDAA for a completely unregulated industry that has the power to destroy lives should not even be considered.”

But don’t put it past Team Schumer to pull a fast one. As outgoing leader Mitch McConnell scolded Democrats, “December drama is not the way to demonstrate we’re serious about our most basic governing responsibilities.”

And yet, the lame-duck session of Congress — that period between Election Day and the next term — is notorious for shenanigans. It’s the last gasp of the party in power to get everything they want before coming back to a new session entirely diminished.

Exactly how diminished is still a subject of debate. As of Monday morning, Johnson had an even smaller majority to work with — a wafer-thin one-seat advantage heading into the last House race to be called. Thanks to Matt Gaetz’s speedy exit and Reps. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) and Mike Waltz’s (R-Fla.) promotions to the Trump administration, the young speaker will be hanging on by his fingernails.

“It will be a challenge,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) admitted to Perkins, “but that’s okay.” He pointed back to 2017 when Republicans had a 30-seat majority and still had problems getting policies through. “You know, we were down to a one-seat majority at the beginning of this year, and we’ve still got a lot of big things done. I will tell you, our best whip is going to be Donald Trump. And we’ve got President Trump wanting to get a very aggressive, bold agenda for the American people. … And so, I think anybody who’s getting in the way of that is going to hear from Donald Trump himself. And I think they’ll get on board.”

Fortunately for Speaker Johnson, FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter told The Washington Stand, “He’s been in this position before of dealing with a one- to three-member majority.” And “Republicans won’t want to have vacant seats for long,” Carpenter noted. “At least Speaker Johnson can be confident there’s little chance a Democrat will replace either Stefanik or Waltz, as both districts are considered safe for Republicans — so there’s not much of a chance for the overall balance of power to shift much. Still, the business of running the House of Representatives and leading the House Republican conference will be much easier when those vacancies are eventually filled.”

Through it all, Americans have one reason to be encouraged, Gonzalez underscored. “The big picture that Johnson has been focused on since day one is curing Congress of the disease of Christmas-time omnibuses,” he told TWS. “We’ll hopefully have some wins, and we may take some losses this month, but if he accomplishes that, it would be a major accomplishment. The lame duck has been begging to be put out of its misery for 20 years.”