Congress faces lengthy agenda, little time

WASHINGTON – Congress returns to Washington today with a full slate of must-do legislation, just three short weeks before the Christmas recess and with four members of the slim Democratic Senate majority likely to miss votes as they campaign for president.

The lawmakers’ to-do list would be daunting under the best of circumstances: a major energy bill, legislation to rein in President Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program, 11 of the 12 annual bills to fund the federal government, a farm bill, and a bill to stave off the expansion of the alternative minimum tax and extend a raft of expiring tax credits.

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., must tackle that agenda and battle a combative GOP minority and an intransigent Republican president without a reliable majority.

“The majority leader’s job is always tough, and his job has been made all the more difficult by the presidential candidates,” said Senate Minority Whip Trent Lott, R-Miss., who will resign by month’s end. “But if you’re going to run for president, you’ve got to get out there and run for president.”

Senate Democrats normally can count on a 51-to-49 majority, assuming independent Joe Lieberman, of Connecticut, stays with his old party. With Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., Barack Obama, D-Ill., Joe Biden, D-Del., Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., campaigning furiously for party presidential nominations, Republicans can have an effective 48-to-47 majority, with an extra vote from Lieberman on most national security issues.

With the Iowa caucuses one month away, many of those candidates have warned their leadership not to expect them around much. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the Senate chamber’s second-ranking Democrat, who is in charge of vote counting, said he does not expect to see the candidates during debates, but hopes to schedule votes that allow senators enough time to return to Washington.

The alternative-minimum-tax bill is already dangerously overdue. Without it, a parallel tax system enacted in 1969 to ensure that 155 super-wealthy families would pay at least some income taxes would this year reach as many as 23 million more families, mainly with upper-middle incomes.

Even if Congress can pass an AMT fix in the next two weeks, 6.7 million tax returns still would be delayed, deferring refunds worth $17 billion for weeks, the Internal Revenue Service’s independent oversight board estimated.

But the tax bill is not even on the Senate’s calendar this week. Instead, Reid would like to wrap up work on the Senate’s version of a farm bill, then tackle the issue of warrantless wiretapping.

The House this week hopes to finish an energy bill that would raise automobile fuel economy standards for the first time in 32 years, then hand it off to the Senate for final passage the following week.