November 24, 2024
House lawmakers are leaving Washington, D.C., until the new year, setting up a busy 2024 after they punted on several key legislative priorities.

Read this article for free!

Plus get unlimited access to thousands of articles, videos and more with your free account!

Please enter a valid email address.

It’s going to be a busy first half of 2024 for the U.S. House of Representatives, with leaders punting several critical battles into the new year before leaving Washington.

The Senate is expected to stay an extra week to hash out a deal on border policy and foreign aid. But even if a deal is struck, the House will likely reckon with it when they return.

Lawmakers left Capitol Hill for the end-of-year holiday recess on Thursday after passing the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass annual bill that lays out Pentagon policy for the next fiscal year.

HOUSE PASSES BILL TO AVERT GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN, SPEAKER JOHNSON NOTCHES FIRST BIG LEGISLATIVE WIN

Speaker Mike Johnson will have a full agenda ahead of him when the House is back in the new year (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Included in this year’s NDAA is a short-term extension of a key provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) known as Section 702. The tool allows the intelligence community to spy on foreign nationals outside the U.S. without a warrant, even if the person on the other side of their communications is an American citizen.

The NDAA punted the FISA debate into April, and it’s expected to be tricky. Opponents of Section 702, mainly hardliners on the right and left, are seeking to vastly restrict the measure; they’re arguing it impedes the civil rights of private U.S. citizens. 

MIGRANT ENCOUNTERS AGAIN TOP 10K IN A SINGLE DAY AS LAWMAKERS EYE NEW BORDER LIMITS

Reps. Scott Perry and Chip Roy

Rep. Scott Perry, left, and Rep. Chip Roy are among the conservatives who want to restrict FISA (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Others have lauded the tool as critical to preventing terror attacks. 

Ahead of that, House lawmakers have given themselves until March to reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), another key U.S. program set to expire this year but given a short extension. The Senate is expected to take that up next week.

SCHUMER ANNOUNCES SENATE WILL CANCEL PART OF HOLIDAY RECESS AS BORDER TALKS CONTINUE

And the yet-unsolved government funding fight will be one of Congress’s most immediate problems, with a stopgap federal spending bill known as a continuing resolution (CR) forcing lawmakers to fund some agencies by Jan. 19 and the rest by Feb. 2. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is expected to keep the Senate in session another week (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

The House has passed five of 12 single-subject appropriations bills they have promised to finish, while the Senate passed three in a combined “minibus.”

But there’s still a long road ahead – negotiators in the House and Senate are still at odds on a topline number they’ll ultimately have to compromise on.