Heres what GOP can and should do for their last two months in power

Republicans in Congress will lose power at the start of January, and they won’t get it back soon.But they still have eight weeks until then.They’ll need to get to work.There’s a long history of achievement in lame-duck sessions with the outgoing Congress.More than a dozen Supreme Court justices have been confirmed in a lame-duck session, including legends such as Chief Justice John Marshall and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the Thirteenth Amendment banning slavery was passed by a lame-duck Congress.Sometimes, Congress has done big things even after a major election loss swept one party out of power.But major obstacles lie ahead.The Senate filibuster means that Democrats can stop almost any legislation except for tax, budget and debt-ceiling bills that use the budget reconciliation process.Even for bills that have bipartisan support, Democrats may prefer to wait until they can negotiate a better deal with their big new majorities.That could be the fate of farm bills and the bipartisan Protect College Sports Act, which already passed the Senate and regulates things like the rights of athletes to cash in on their name and likeness.The reconciliation process is cumbersome.The easiest thing is to confirm judges, which requires only a majority in the Senate — but that faces its own obstacles: Keeping the Republican Senate caucus together won’t be easy.Because he won a special election to fill JD Vance’s old seat, Sherrod Brown will be sworn in immediately, dropping the GOP Senate majority to 52.Mitch McConnell is still in poor health; Tommy Tuberville and Marsha Blackburn will be busy in Alabama and Tennessee, where they were just elected governor.Some departing incumbents, such as John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, are still bitter at President Donald Trump, while swing-state Republicans such as Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson, Pennsylvania’s Dave McCormack and North Carolina’s Ted Budd will be nervously looking at their next election.

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