The House has been out of session for two weeks, and it was clearly time for the holidays after the last few months exposed fault lines within both parties.
However, it will not be smooth sailing when lawmakers return on Tuesday. The most important legislative item will be yet another government funding deadline, with nine bills remaining to be passed to fund federal departments and agencies.
Members will continue their push for a bipartisan congressional stock trading ban. A discharge petition, which would force a vote on a bill led by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL), sits at 72 out of the 218 signatures required for the petition to “ripen.”
Though the House passed a healthcare bill in mid-December 2025, the healthcare fight is still not over. Conservatives are gunning for serious reforms after Obamacare subsidies expired as the calendar turned to 2026. But Democrats scored a win, with a petition reaching the 218-signature threshold, thanks to four Republicans, which will force a vote on a three-year extension of the subsidies as early as this month.
Hovering over Republicans is a second or even third reconciliation bill, but the monthslong road the party took to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act makes another round more unlikely.
1. Jan. 30 funding fight
Lawmakers left Capitol Hill with the unfortunate but unsurprising reality that they will be forced to pass a majority of appropriations bills in 2026.
The record-breaking government shutdown, which lasted 43 days, ended with only three of the 12 appropriations bills making it across the finish line: Legislative Branch, Veterans Affairs, and Agriculture. The continuing resolution to keep the rest of the government open expires on Jan. 30.
From Tuesday to Jan. 30, the House is only expected to be in session for 12 days. This gives lawmakers little time for negotiating and leads to a tangible reality that, once again, Congress will be relying on a CR to fund the government.
House Republicans are eyeing a three-bill package — Commerce, Justice, and Science; Energy and Water; and Interior — for consideration in early January, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-OK) confirmed before the House left for the holidays.
After that legislation, appropriators are hoping to pass bills such as Financial Services, State-Fraternal Order of Police, and Homeland Security. A final bill package would comprise Transportation, Housing, and Urban Development; Labor, Health and Human Services; and Defense.
Cole had hoped to move a three-bill minibus before the end of 2025. But appropriators were unable to bring a single bill to the floor in December, pushing the House into crunch time in the new year.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, previously said that to leave all of the remaining nine bills to January would be “unbelievable” and a “nightmare, trying to get anything done.”
“I don’t want another CR, I don’t think Mr. Cole wants another CR,” DeLauro told reporters before leaving for the holidays. “Let’s get the bills done, but we’ve got to get them and the allocations, and hoping the Senate will cooperate and get us what we need so we can move forward.”
Senate GOP objections to the appropriations process were finally lifted during the final week of the session. But the heavy lifting will be done after the new year.
2. Stock trading
One thing both parties are rallying behind is a bill to ban members’ ability to trade stocks.
High on Luna’s priority list heading into 2026 is getting a vote on any congressional stock trading ban bill.
Many members of the House, on both sides of the aisle, have introduced bills that ban members, their spouses, and dependent children from individual stock trading, but none have gotten a full-throttle support from leadership.
Luna said she received a commitment that a bill supported by leadership would be brought up in the new year. But, she is still not pulling her discharge petition. She said there is also talk about “potentially changing the House rules to get this effective immediately.”
Luna has said that “everyone knows” insider trading is taking place on Capitol Hill, and a majority of the public supports a stock trading ban.
“And then no one wants to talk about it, because then they call themselves out,” the congresswoman said. “But it’s totally happening up here.”
Luna is no stranger to the power of a discharge petition. Last year, she received enough signatures to force a vote on a bill to reinstate proxy voting, a COVID-19-era House rule, but for new parents.
The congresswoman and the speaker eventually worked out a deal to install vote pairing as an alternative, albeit a weak one, but it saved the caucus from a seismic split.
3. Healthcare
The House passed the Lower Health Care Premiums for All Americans Act before lawmakers left town, but the bill is mostly for messaging purposes as it stands.
Inaction on extending the Obamacare subsidies, which expired on Wednesday, meant that premiums for many people are set to rise exponentially in 2026. This poses a significant problem for centrist Republicans, particularly in swing districts that have allowed the GOP to keep its razor-thin majority for the last three years.
Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Mike Lawler (R-NY), Rob Bresnahan (R-PA), and Ryan Mackenzie (R-PA) gave Democrats an early Christmas present when they signed the petition for a three-year extension proposal from House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY).
This will set up a vote on the Obamacare subsidies at some point in January, given that the petition must wait seven legislative days after it receives the 218 signatures.
GOP leadership will likely be looking for every opportunity to avoid holding a vote on the bill. But Johnson successfully striking a deal with Jeffries to pull the legislation is highly unlikely, given that the relationship between Jeffries and the speaker has soured since the government shutdown.
Centrist lawmakers also expect 15 to 20 Republicans to vote in favor, so when it comes for a vote, it is likely to pass. The problem will be its fate in the Senate, as the upper chamber has already rejected a three-year extension.
4. Possible reconciliation 2.0 and 3.0
An unlikely mountain that Republicans are hoping to climb is passing another reconciliation bill. The feat is much easier said than done, given that the first reconciliation bill was the culmination of two years of conference work and many ups and downs that exposed heavy infighting within the GOP.
The Republican Study Committee unveiled a reconciliation 2.0 plan in an op-ed in November 2025, led by Chairman August Pfluger (R-TX), which focuses on affordability, law and order, and the American family, per the committee’s outline.
Is that possible? Hard to say. The first reconciliation didn’t start in a great place, taking from the beginning of the year until July 4, 2025, to get legislation to Trump’s desk.
After passing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Johnson said the GOP had “one planned for this fall” in 2025 and “one hopefully for next spring” of 2026.
But the fall came and went. Some House members have said that they’d like to get moving on a second reconciliation bill, particularly if it focused on healthcare, but many have acknowledged that the appetite among lawmakers may not be there.
“There are other items we’d like to do, but we got to get consensus,” Scalise said. “As you saw with that bill, it took months to put together, because even with energy production, keeping tax rates low for families, all the things that were so important in that bill, it was hard to pass.”
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It does not appear there is an appetite in the White House for a second bill, either. In October 2025, Trump possibly closed the door to a second reconciliation bill. He said the One Big Beautiful Bill Act contained “everything” he wanted, saying, “We don’t need to pass any more bills.” He reiterated that sentiment in December.
The success of a second bill would largely depend on Trump’s desire to get involved, as heavy poking and prodding from the president factored heavily into Johnson’s ability to wrangle enough GOP votes and get the legislation across the finish line.