Democrats, including Connecticut’s delegation, have a long to-do list of priorities they want to get over the finish line before the end of the year. And they have a heightened sense of urgency to try to get as much as they can done before Republicans have uniform control of Congress and Donald Trump returns to the White House.
But they are grappling with the realities of time with only another five weeks left in the lame-duck session. Plus, fights over must-pass bills will take precedence over a number of other issues lawmakers would like to see finalized by the end of December.
The focus will largely center on legislation to fund the federal government beyond Dec. 20 — and whether they ultimately fund a larger appropriations bill through the end of the fiscal year next September or a short-term bill to keep it running at current levels, known as a continuing resolution. On top of that, Congress is also in the midst of negotiating its annual defense policy bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.
Members of Connecticut’s delegation are putting a heavy emphasis on short- and long-term agricultural measures to help out small farms and those affected by extreme weather. On top of pushing for reauthorizing a five-year Farm Bill, they also hope to see movement on judicial confirmations, Ukraine funding and the Kids Online Safety Act in the remaining weeks, though the prospects of taking up all of those are low.
While Democrats still control the Senate and the White House, the extent to which Congress gets things done, particularly on government funding, could in part depend on what President-elect Donald Trump expects from Republicans.
“Obviously this week has been organizing and reacting to some of these nominations,” U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said, referring to Trump’s appointments to his future Cabinet. “I think next week is when you’ll see more progress on legislative issues.”
“I think Republicans still are trying to figure out what Trump wants in a lame duck, whether that matters, whether they’re interested in picking any fights with him,” he added, “so many things are in flux with him.”
Focus on must-pass bills
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and other House GOP leaders are floating short-term bills to fund the government through either March or September. But Johnson indicated to reporters in Washington this week that “the [president-elect’s] preference on that will carry a lot of weight obviously.”
Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping to negotiate a new spending deal through September since it is their last chance to hold major leverage in spending talks for at least the next two years. U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, who will remain the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, has said she will work on bipartisan bills to fund the government and push back on any efforts to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act or public education.
While debate continues over the process to keep the government running, lawmakers feel confident in their ability to pass another bipartisan NDAA that, among other things, authorizes pay raises for service members and typically gives a boost to Connecticut’s biggest defense contractors that work on submarines, helicopters and military jet engines.
“In order for it to actually happen, it really has to follow last year’s pattern, which is that they strip all of the hot-button issues that would really bring down the bill and get the really sort of core issues in focus to get the bill done. They really feel the weight I think of history and when you know the bill has passed 63 years in a row, they don’t want to flub it,” said U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, adding that the NDAA is still likely to see other measures tacked on like the reauthorization of Coast Guard funding.
But Courtney warned about the potential implications for funding the U.S. Department of Defense through a continuing resolution for an entire fiscal year. He specifically pointed to what that could mean for the second Columbia-class submarine, the USS Wisconsin, that is funded this year. He argued it could delay the delivery of the ballistic missile sub, which is currently in construction by Electric Boat in Groton.
A boost for small farms in CT?
The renewal of the Farm Bill, which authorizes funding for nutrition and agricultural programs for five years, is also facing a make-or-break moment before Congress. The most recent version expired in September 2023 and was extended for one year. With funds set to lapse at the end of the year, lawmakers will need to either negotiate a reauthorization or pass another extension.
The bill mainly consists of nutrition programs — like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps — with the rest going toward agriculture and conservation.
“We’re at a point where the funding will expire at the end of December, so there’s a heightened sense of urgency,” U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-5th District, told reporters a day after the Nov. 5 election. “My concern has always been making sure that small farmers in my district are represented, making sure that we protect our environment with mitigation and resilience.”
Hayes is the ranking member on the House Agriculture Committee’s Nutrition, Foreign Agriculture, and Horticulture subcommittee, and at a committee vote, she opposed the House GOP’s bill that amounted to about $30 billion cuts in SNAP benefits, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. The House and Senate will need to work out the differences in their bills and negotiations are ongoing.
Meanwhile, Connecticut’s entire delegation is eyeing reforms so farmers in the region can benefit from federal programs like those in states with much larger farms and those who grow commodity crops like corn, soybeans and wheat.
States like Connecticut and others around New England have a much different agricultural landscape, climate and topography with farmers more focused on specialty crops and more diversified produce.
The lawmakers are pushing a two-pronged approach to help farmers and producers across the state in the short-term whose farms have been at risk over the past couple of years from droughts, flooding and hail. They are also looking to expand crop insurance, which is typically underutilized by smaller farmers who do not benefit from it or cannot afford it.
Led by U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, the delegation and a few dozen lawmakers called on appropriators and the Biden administration to include emergency disaster funding in any legislation that needs to pass by the end of the year and for it to cover “agricultural producers so that they can continue to feed our country and our international trading partners, and to secure our domestic food supply for the future.”
Courtney said he hopes any supplemental funding on this issue could go back to help those who experienced damaged crops and farmland in 2023 due to heavy rainfall and flooding and a frost that occurred shortly before that year.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., indicated Thursday from the Senate floor he would like to pass “comprehensive, robust” disaster aid in the next few weeks. But the signatories argued that emergency relief should pass in tandem with a multiyear Farm Bill.
In a separate letter spearheaded by Blumenthal, Murphy and Courtney, lawmakers also urged leadership to consider the inclusion of the “Save Our Small Farms Act” into a final Farm Bill, noting that small and midsize farms who grow more diversified crops “lack comprehensive, affordable crop insurance programs.” They argued the bill would reduce the amount of paperwork to obtain insurance programs through the Farm Service Agency and the Risk Management Agency and make them more affordable.
“The reality of climate change has really started to change the discussion surrounding agriculture. The small farms are not limited to Democratic states and Democratic districts,” said Courtney, who represents a lot of farmers in eastern Connecticut.
“These are different kinds of issues that I think Congress was dealing with 10 years ago,” he continued. “I just think whether it’s FEMA’s budget, whether it’s the Department of Agriculture’s budget, the price tag of climate change is growing. That’s the reality that even climate change deniers are just going to have to contend with. We’re going to pay one way or another in terms of trying to address this issue.”
Quicker pace on judicial confirmations
Confirming as many of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, meanwhile, is a high priority for Democrats, and they got the balling rolling with several this week.
“It certainly increases the urgency to get nominations done between now and January,” Murphy said. “We’re obviously going to prioritize judges. I don’t know about the prospects for other legislation.”
Blumenthal said Democrats have 26 pending judicial nominees, though a couple have already been confirmed by the Senate this week with a handful more teed up for final consideration in the coming days.
One of those nominees is Sarah Russell, who was nominated to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court in Connecticut. She is up for consideration before the full Senate with votes likely scheduled for next week.
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved her nomination along party lines in January, needing to go through the process a second time after her initial nomination expired with no action before the end of 2023. Biden renominated her in early 2024.
During her confirmation hearing and subsequent committee hearings, Russell got pushback from some GOP senators over a letter she signed in 2020 about public health concerns surrounding incarceration during the pandemic. The letter called on Gov. Ned Lamont to “immediately release, to the maximum extent possible, people incarcerated pre-trial and post-conviction,” to place a moratorium on those newly admitted to prisons and jails and to protect the health of those who were still incarcerated.
Russell, a former public defender who teaches as a law school professor at Quinnipiac University, submitted thousands of documents to the Judiciary Committee as a nominee but did not disclose the letter, which she called an “oversight.” She has since said that it does “not accurately reflect my views” and was too broad. Critics like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who sits on the committee, called the contents of the letter “extreme.”
She is unlikely to win over much, if any, support from Republican senators in the final votes. She needs a simple majority to get confirmed, which could mean little room for error among Democratic senators if no Republicans vote to confirm her.
While judicial nominations are part of Democrats’ lame-duck strategy, Blumenthal argued that Congress will need to move at a faster pace if it wants to get to other priorities. For him, that includes additional military funding for Ukraine before GOP leaders who are skeptical of further resources take the reins of government.
He is also pushing for the House to take up the Kids Online Safety Act. His bill with U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., overwhelmingly passed the Senate over the summer and the House version of the bill got through committee, though there were lingering concerns from lawmakers in both parties as well as some in House leadership. They would also need to work out the differences between both versions of the legislation.
“On our present schedule, we could spend all of the remaining time simply confirming judges, so we need an accelerated schedule,” Blumenthal said at a press conference about the lame-duck session earlier this week. “It can’t be business as usual in the remaining days of this session.”
While the first week back from recess has gotten off to a slow start on the legislative front, much of the week has been dedicated to the votes for new leadership in the next session of Congress and the news around Trump quickly filling out his Cabinet with appointments that have raised eyebrows on both sides of the aisle.
Murphy argued the president-elect’s appointment of Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who resigned from Congress almost immediately after Trump’s announcement, as U.S. attorney general raises fears that he could weaponize the Justice Department for political purposes. The DOJ had investigated Gaetz over claims he had sex with an underage girl who was paid, but he was never charged and has denied the allegations. The House Ethics Committee was also investigating him and was set to release a report, but it is unclear if it will be publicly released because of his resignation.
And the Connecticut senator believes it could usher in an unpredictable time in Washington as Trump returns to the White House and Republicans become the majority party again early next year.
“A lot of us are reeling today from the Gaetz selection. It says something much bigger than who he wants to run the DOJ. It’s a sign we may be in a very immediate constitutional crisis of sorts,” Murphy said. “I’m not sure what’s coming after [Trump’s] inauguration.”