Do-nothing congress to do something...

Congress actually set to pass bills — lots of them

Get ready for a legislative gusher to end the year.

By Jake Sherman

It's become as certain as cold Thanksgiving leftovers, Christmas lights and cheap holiday parties with bad booze.

The legislative onslaught is about to begin.

As the calendar turns to December, Congress is about to encounter a legislative avalanche, ensuring the next 18 days will be filled with action on issues from education to transportation, from taxes to refugees.

And as if on cue — and seemingly out of nowhere — Capitol Hill is snapping into action. Bipartisan compromises are set to hit the floor. Hopes are flickering that a bottleneck of stalled nominations will finally open. And crises are likely to be averted, at least if Republican leaders in both chambers have their way.

Top lawmakers and aides are bullish about avoiding calamity: A government shutdown looks unlikely, they say, and the debt ceiling is already off the docket thanks to John Boehner.

Some of the bills they plan to take up before gaveling out for 2015 are a reaction to current events. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said his chamber is likely to move to overhaul a program that allows some foreign travelers to remain in the United States for three months without a visa. It’s just one of the legislative responses to the Syrian refugee crisis and terror attacks in Paris.

On top of that, two House chairmen are looking to notch legislative landmarks. The House plans a vote this week on a rewrite of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act — a long-stalled rewrite of the 2001 No Child Left Behind law. House Education Chairman John Kline of Minnesota, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, is pressing to get it done.

A five- or six-year highway bill could also come to a vote as soon as this week, clearing an issue that has long bedeviled Congress. It would be a major victory for House Transportation Chairman Bill Shuster (R-Pa.), Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and McCarthy.

A massive, several hundred-billion-dollar package of business-targeted tax breaks known as “extenders” is also working its way through the back rooms of Capitol Hill, and could come up before Dec. 11, several aides said Monday.

The Senate, meanwhile, also has its work cut out for it. The chamber cleared a new director, Gayle Smith, for the U.S. Agency for International Development Monday evening, and was ready to begin approving nearly two-dozen State Department nominees.

Not to mention, the Senate is poised to vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

All of this activity, of course, is in addition to passing a government-funding bill before Dec. 11. Top Democrats and Republicans worked over Thanksgiving to hash out the details of a yearlong “omnibus,” which would keep the government open until the end of September 2016.

Though some lawmakers want to use the must-pass budget to push for their pet policies, there does not at this point appear to be the kind of mass movement that could provoke a closure. Ryan can promise this is the last time Congress will govern in this deadline-driven manner, that he's simply cleaning up Boehner's scraps.