Lame-Duck Session

Before adoption of the Twentieth Amendment to the Constitution in 1933, the so-called lame-duck amendment, postelection sessions were a regular feature of the congressional calendar. The amendment advanced the starting date of a new Congress to January from March. The first time Congress held a lame-duck session after the amendment's ratification was in 1941, and then it was on a standby basis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt called Congress into special session—technically, the third session of the 76th Congress—to deal with the threat of war in Europe. From that time through 2012, Congress has met in lame-duck sessions nineteen times.

To the chagrin of some lawmakers, lame-duck sessions became more common starting in the late 1990s as partisan bickering stalled action in the closely divided legislative bodies. End-of-the-year sessions were required in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012.

The most significant of these was the 1998 lame-duck session, when the House of Representatives alone reconvened and voted to impeach President Bill Clinton. (See Clinton impeachment trial.)

Battles over budget priorities forced lawmakers to lumber into a lame-duck session in 2000. In 2002, after Democrats lost control of the Senate and surrendered House seats in the election, lawmakers returned to complete action on a comprehensive bill creating a Department of Homeland Security. But they could not reach agreement on almost all of the annual appropriations bills and instead passed a continuing resolution to push off the budget debate until 2003.

In the 2008 lame-duck session, lawmakers were unable to agree on a rescue package for the ailing domestic automobile industry. Although the House passed a bill, the Senate did not. The 2010 session was far more legislatively productive. Seeing a final chance to get their agenda through an all-Democratic Congress, Democrats passed an economic stimulus bill that renewed expiring tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush; a repeal of the military's “don't ask, don't tell” policy barring openly gay service members; and ratification of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia. The 2012 lame-duck session was devoted to wrangling over a massive tax [Page 337]and spending package intended to avoid a so-called fiscal cliff. It ultimately made permanent the Bush administration's tax cuts for individuals earning less than $400,000 per year and couples earning less than $450,000 while raising rates on those who earn more.

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