Post-elections, can the parties agree on anything?
CBS News Congressional correspondent Nancy Cordes answered your questions about the 2014 midterm elections on the "CBS This Morning" Facebook page, and even co-host Norah O'Donnell participated!
Marilyn Cummings: What are the areas of agreement between both parties? What can we expect?
Nancy Cordes: Marilyn, I am struggling to answer this question because there aren't many. Keystone pipeline stands out as one...it got well over 60 votes in a "test vote" in the Senate, so there's clearly bipartisan support for approving it...same goes for repealing Obamacare's medical device tax...which got 79 votes in a test vote. Defense authorization is something we always see both sides come together on at the end of the year. There are certain tax extenders that expire at the end of the year, and I'd expect to see bipartisan support for continuing some of those. Frustratingly, there are certain major issues -- like tax reform -- where members will admit behind closed doors that there's an easy obvious middle ground solution, but in public they struggle to compromise because it would mean alienating parts of their base. Profiles in courage! One thing to watch in the lame duck is whether senators who are retiring (or who have been defeated) feel freed up to vote more boldly on tough issues because they aren't seeking reelection.
Norah O'Donnell: There are now 100 women in Congress for the first time ever. When all the votes are tallied, should we expect these numbers to change or stay the same?
Cordes: Hi Norah! Great question. In the Senate, women had 20 seats before this election and will end up with either 20 or 21, depending on the outcome of Mary Landrieu's runoff in Louisiana in December. The number of women in the House is definitely going to go up, and once the outstanding races are decided women will hold more than 100 seats in the two chambers combined. And women scored a few milestones in this election. At 30, Elise Stefanik (R-NY) becomes the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. Mia Love (R-UT) will be the first African American republican woman in Congress. Republican Joni Ernst, who is going to the Senate, will be the first Iowa woman to be sent to Congress ever. And the ranks of republican women senators will grow by 2, to a total of six -- that's a new high. The most they've ever had in the Senate at one time was 5. One last interesting fact -- there are now just three states that have never sent a woman to Congress: Delaware, Mississippi, and Vermont.
Tabatha Lane Wells: Will there be another government lock down?
Cordes: Never say never, but Republicans came out of that experience with very little desire to provoke another shutdown, because polls showed they got the lion's share of the blame for that 16 day impasse. That being said, Congress does still need to fund the government, which seems like a basic responsibility but can end up pitting the two sides against each other in a protracted standoff where neither side wants to back down.
Read the entire Q&A on our Facebook page: