Congress' to-do list looks as complicated as ever

Members of Congress return to Washington this week for their final work period of the year, and the last time during the Obama administration that Democrats will control either the House or Senate.

But the to-do list for the remainder of the lame-duck session doesn't seem to be getting any shorter, and has arguably grown more complex since lawmakers left town before the Thanksgiving holiday.

The most pressing order of business in the next two weeks is for Congress to pass a spending bill to fund the government. The current legislation to keep the government running expires on December 11. If no new money is appropriated by then, the government will shut down.

The GOP leadership seemed to have little appetite to repeat the politically damaging 2013 government shutdown, but President Obama's move to shield millions of illegal immigrants from deportation earlier this month has complicated matters for them. House Republicans are looking for ways to extend the most of the government's funding. At the same time, however, they're trying to isolate funding related to immigration enforcement, so they can use it to block Mr. Obama's executive actions.

On NBC Sunday, Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Oklahoma, who will be the state's newest senator come January, said that isolating immigration funding was "one possible solution."

But, he added, "That would cede spending power on so many other measures, though, like [Environmental Protection Agency] overreach. So what we might also do is pass a short-term spending measure into the new year to let a new and accountable Congress, not a lame duck Congress, make these decisions."

Rep. Peter King, R-New York, also said that Republicans are eager to exert more control over the purse strings when they control both houses of Congress next year.

"I want us to have a clean slate so we can lay out our agenda and have real budget fights going into next year, but not to be having them now when it's done under the gun and the possible threat of a government shutdown and, again, just lurching from month to month," he said in an interview on Fox.

Both representatives' comments reflect the reality that they're not certain how Congress will keep the government running, despite the urgent deadline.

"I'm not sure if you talk to [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid or [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell if they could tell you how they are going to work these things out," former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Virginia, told CBS News.

Another pressing issue for Congress is the approximately 60 individual and corporate tax breaks that have already expired or are set to expire at the end of the year. House and Senate negotiators were on their way toward crafting a compromise bill to make some of those tax breaks permanent when the White House preemptively issued a veto threat before a deal could even be announced.

"The President would veto the proposed deal because it would provide permanent tax breaks to help well-connected corporations while neglecting working families," said White House Deputy Press Secretary Jen Friedman last week.

Several Democrats have echoed the White House's objection to the deal, making it less clear how the issue will be resolved.

Just one item has come off the to-do list for the remaining weeks: the confirmation of Mr. Obama's attorney general nominee, Loretta Lynch. Reid said that the nomination won't come up until next year, when Republicans control Congress. The Senate will also need to confirm a successor to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who resigned last week, although the president has not yet nominated a replacement.

Beyond those two high-profile nominations, Senate Democrats will likely try to confirm as many of their outstanding nominees as possible before the Republicans take over.

"They could clear a lot of these nominations but if they move the controversial ones I think that's going to create a lot of animosity," which could bleed into next year, Davis said.

On top of the major issues, there are several other initiatives that are pressing but don't have a hard deadline. The administration has requested $6.2 billion to fight the Ebola virus and $5.6 billion to help fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) after President Obama approved sending 1,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq. Those could both be folded into a government funding bill, or punted to the next Congress. There's also a long-outstanding request from the administration for $3.7 billion to help handle the influx of Mexican and Central American children coming across the southern border earlier this year, although Congress has failed to act on the request since it was made in July and seems unlikely to do so now.

Retiring lawmakers Rep. Buck McKeon, R-California, and Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, the heads of the House and Senate armed services committees, will be looking to pass the defense authorization bill, a piece of legislation that has been approved by the end of the year for more than 50 years. Negotiators are still hammering out differences. And the House is still sitting on an extension of an expiring terrorism risk insurance program that passed the Senate earlier this year.

Anything left undone will fall on the GOP's plate next year, joining other issues that were punted to 2015 like highway funding and raising the debt ceiling. They will also be working to establish that they can break the gridlock by getting bills through both the House and Senate and to the president's desk.

"It would behoove the Republicans to get as much off the table as they could but I just don't think it's likely," Davis said.