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Lawmakers returned to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for a lame-duck session to complete the 118th Congress' business, including addressing the nation's annual defense policy bill and funding the federal government for fiscal 2025.
On Sept. 25, the House and Senate approved a continuing resolution to fund the government through Dec. 20. Congressional leaders must now reach an agreement about a path forward before the short-term spending deal expires to avoid a government shutdown.
House Republicans are considering several options — including extending the current CR so that agencies will remain funded through March 2025, or approving full-year funding bills.
Before the 2024 presidential election last week, the House passed 5 of 12 appropriations bills for fiscal 2025, while the Senate approved none, making an extension of the latest CR more likely.
"When you think about defense funding, it costs us money to have short-term funding bills when you cannot do long-term procurement, to buy the kind of long-range defense systems that we need to compete with China," House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., told Fox News Digital Monday. "China is not operating on short-term spending bills, neither should we."
With Senate Democrats losing control of the chamber in the next Congress, leadership is focused on judicial nominations and finalizing the fiscal 2025 National Defense Authorization Act.
The NDAA is the nation's annual defense policy bill and has been passed for 63 consecutive years, a streak neither political party wants broken.
Yet the bill has not followed normal legislative procedure during the last two years, and has largely been shaped in closed-door negotiations.
In October, 125 lawmakers called for the inclusion of a provision in the NDAA that would potentially resolve a contentious debate over the Air Force’s proposal to transfer National Guardsmen to the Space Force without the consent of their governors.
"This straightforward and commonsense amendment preserves the statutory authority of governors to oversee National Guard forces under Title 32, while permitting the one-time personnel transfer that the U.S. Air Force requested," reads an Oct. 16 letter from the 125 members of Congress to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees.
Congress also plans to address a measure to provide additional money for disaster aid after Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
As of Wednesday morning, the Senate had not yet voted on Lt. Gen. Duke A. Pirak's nomination to serve as director of the Air Guard.
President Joe Biden's administration had also not yet put forth a nomination for the vice chief of the National Guard Bureau.
— By Jennifer Hickey
