Lame Duck Session

2000-2022 | 22 years

In this episode of The West Wing, the White House is considering calling a lame-duck session of congress to try to pass a nuclear test ban treaty. A lame-duck congress is one convened after the next congress has been elected. Now that the 2022 Midterms are (mostly) over, the current congress is now a lame duck congress, until the 118th congress convenes on January 3rd, 2023.

The lame-duck congress not only has to pass routine legislation until the next congress is sworn in, but Democrats, who lost the House, will also be trying to pass legislation they know will not be passed with a Republican House. This can already be seen with the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex(and interracial) unions, something many have seen as necessary after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe V. Wade when it was suggested that other privacy rights, such as same-sex marriage, could be at risk. The bill was passed in the Senate this Tuesday 61 to 36, with 12 Republicans supporting the Bill, and will go to the House to be passed, then to President Biden to sign.

The lame-duck congress is also looking to revise the Electoral Count Act, which former President Trump, who recently announced he is running again, tried to use to overturn the 2020 election results. Around 40 Senators have signed onto a bill to reform the act, meanwhile, the House already passed a similar measure earlier in the year. Democrats are also looking for the Lame-Duck Congress to pass a bill raising the debt ceiling (even though it won't need to be raised until next year) while Democrats still hold a majority of the House, because Republicans have warned they will use it as leverage.

Among other things, the 117th Congress’s legislative agenda includes allocating more money for the Covid-19 response, providing more money to Ukraine, intervening to avert a rail strike, the annual defense authorization bill, funding the government (whether as a Continuing Resolution or Omnibus package), confirming more judges, and extending tax breaks.

There is a wide array of things the 117th Congress can get done before the next Congress convenes. It’s interesting to think that a party that lost 9 seats in the 2022 election, losing control of the House, gets over a month to ram all the legislation they can through, even though it has been the will of the people that they no longer have power. In the episode, Senator Tony Marino brings this up, telling Toby “I'm a senator for another 10 weeks and I'm going to choose to respect these people and what they want. You call a lame duck session now, and I've got to abstain.” However, President Bartlet later in response to this idea tells Toby, “You know we forget sometimes, in all the talk about democracy we forget it's not a democracy, it's a republic. People don't make the decisions, they choose the people who make the decisions.”