Why It Matters
A new Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis in “Lame Duck Sessions of Congress, 1935-2024 (74th-118th Congresses)” shows that the period after an election and before Jan. 3 has become a regular venue for federal lawmaking, even though the incoming Congress has already been chosen. A lame duck session is a period when the sitting Congress meets after its successor has been elected and before the new Congress is sworn in on January 3.
For Congress, the tension is between completing unfinished work and leaving major questions for the successor institutions, a choice illustrated when the 2024 funding law left the debt-limit issue to the 119th Congress.
The Big Picture
Lame duck sessions occurred in 12 of 32 Congresses from 1935 through 1998 and occurred sporadically from 1940 through 1998. The timing has also lengthened: before 2008, Congress typically adjourned before Christmas, while in eight of the nine Congresses before the report's endpoint, sessions continued into the new year.
Recent sessions have been heavily tied to funding, with 49 regular appropriations acts and 26 continuing resolutions enacted during lame-duck sessions from 2000 through 2024. The National Defense Authorization Act has appeared in nearly every modern session, placing defense policy alongside appropriations as a recurring late-Congress task.
The Bottom Line
The enacted law continued most FY2025 appropriations through March 14, 2025, and provided disaster and agricultural assistance. The FY2025 NDAA incorporated the Intelligence Authorization Act and the Department of State Authorization Act for FY2025.
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