"Lawmakers are facing a serious time crunch to hash out government funding for fiscal 2023 as they return to the Capitol with Republicans poised to take a narrow House majority. Congress has until Dec. 16 to agree on new funding levels to avert a government shutdown. And while they can punt the deadline if negotiations require more time, lawmakers on both sides have been adamant that Congress finish its work before January, when a new Congress will be sworn in.

"Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Sunday that he's already begun telling colleagues to prepare for 'heavy work' and 'long hours' ahead of lawmakers' return this week. 'We'regoing to try to have as productive a lame-duck session as possible,' he said.

"His comments underline the jam-packed list of legislative tasks lawmakers have to check off in the coming weeks, all the while sorting through the nation's finances.

"As Congress holds votes for the first time in weeks on Monday, lawmakers are staring down a critical monthlong stretch until government funding is scheduled to lapse. However, none of the annual appropriations bills have made it through both chambers, as the midterm cycle has dominated much of the focus on Capitol Hill for months."

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"The challenge for Republicans is to learn what led this election to be the least predictable election in my lifetime. They also must think through a clear, positive program that creates a vivid alternative of workable, doable solutions that solve the American people's problems. This should represent 90% of their effort.

"The Commitment to America was a start, and I promoted it everywhere. But it didn't become the center of the campaign the way the Contract with America did in 1994. The 75% who said America is on the wrong track want to know what Republicans will do to get America on the right track. McCarthy made a start in this direction, but the party system never drove it home and made it vivid."

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"Our flag does not fly because the wind moves it. It flies with the last breath of each soldier who died protecting it."

"A cloud hangs over Republicans. The election did not go as well as they thought. They expected the results nationwide to resemble the results in Florida, where Republicans walloped Democrats. Didn't happen. Florida now seems to be as exceptional politically as it is culturally.

"Races across the country are much closer than expected. Many have yet to be called. Chances are that the House will flip to Republicans, and Senate control will depend on the outcome of Adam Laxalt's race in Nevada and a probable December runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker in Georgia. It may be a month before we know for sure, but Joe Biden can still become the fifth straight president to lose Congress in a midterm election."

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"A newly energized Republican Party fought Tuesday night to channel voter frustration with inflation, crime and the direction of the country in their bid to win back control of Congress and blunt the agenda of Joe Biden and ruling Democrats in governor's mansions and statehouses nationwide.

"But like the last presidential contest, a verdict was deferred in many close races beyond election day, leaving America with another cliffhanger in a closely divided nation. Even another runoff in a Georgia Senate race was still in the cards early Wednesday. ...

"CNN's exit poll showed more than seven in 10 voters nationwide believed the country was on the wrong track in the hands of Biden Democrats and that inflation was their number one concern. Gallup showed the dissatisfaction level even higher at 81%."

"Founding Father James Madison crafted a Constitution for the worst of times -- and the worst of leaders. He famously observed that we needed a system that did not depend on the good intentions or motivations of our rulers: 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary.' So he created a system that contains a series of checks and balances to prevent the concentration -- and the abuse -- of power. ...

"There has been a growing crisis of faith on the left as leaders and pundits have attacked our Constitution and its institutions, including the Supreme Court. These objections appear to be based not on the Constitution failing to resist extraconstitutional demands but on it failing to yield to such demands. These figures apparently are upset that the democratic process or the Supreme Court have not given them what they demand. Thus, the Constitution or the court must go.

"Widespread references to Jan. 6 should inspire greater confidence in our constitutional system and dispel the doubts being voiced by President Biden and others. The Capitol riot was denounced by most Americans; Republican leaders like Vice President Pence and Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) carried out their constitutional duties. Federal judges (including many appointed by then-President Trump) uniformly rejected challenges to the election; the Supreme Court, with six conservative justices, repeatedly ruled against Trump -- including all three of his appointees.

"The Constitution has weathered every storm in our history, including a Civil War and a 'war' over civil rights. We've tackled everything from a depression to desegregation; we've faced periods of violence and vitriol that tore us apart. And yet, we remain."

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"As Election Day nears and the nation prepares to head to the polls, it's still unclear which party has the best chance to win control of the Senate. But four volatile races in different regions of the country will likely determine the balance of power between Democrats and Republicans.

"The Senate races in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania are ground zero in the battle for Congress' upper chamber, with polling averages showing no clear advantage for either Republicans or Democrats, and the candidates in each race are clamoring to be the win that brings their respective party over the 50-seat threshold for a majority. ...

"The Senate is currently split 50-50 between the two parties, with Vice President Kamala Harris' tie-breaking vote giving Democrats the slimmest possible majority. Assuming Republicans win the races in Ohio, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin, as well as every other race they are heavily favored to win, they would need to win two of the four critical toss-up seats to gain control of the Senate or one of the four seats to maintain the 50-50 split."

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"U.S. President Joe Biden's administration is not serving U.S. economic, energy or national security when it issues unrealistic statements and assessments of what each requires.

"While every administration exaggerates to some extent, misleading claims have become more problematic in today's changing policymaking environment.

"I am not talking about embarrassing misjudgments, like the administration's costly belief that rising inflation was 'transitory.' Political misinformation falls along a spectrum, from the Biden administration repeatedly defending ridiculous statements (the Afghan withdrawal was a success) and shifting blame (expensive gas is due to 'Putin's price hike') to his predecessors Donald Trump cherry-picking pandemic data and Bill Clinton relying on semantic obfuscation.

"Most recently, Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have repeatedly asserted that America's southern border is secure, even though they know perfectly well that it is not. The administration's own delayed data release late last month reveals a record-shattering 2.4 million border-patrol encounters for the fiscal year, plus an estimated half-million illegal migrants who evaded an encounter.

"Squandering credibility is a high price to pay for temporary relief from political pain. Presidents Richard Nixon and Clinton were badly damaged for lying about their scandals and each is now properly remembered as much for that as for what he accomplished in office."

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"Even Greenpeace has finally acknowledged the truth: recycling plastic makes no sense.

"This has been obvious for decades to anyone who crunched the numbers, but the fantasy of recycling plastic proved irresistible to generations of environmentalists and politicians. They preached it to children, mandated it for adults, and bludgeoned municipalities and virtue-signaling corporations into wasting vast sums --probably hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide -- on an enterprise that has been harmful to the environment as well as to humanity.

"Now Greenpeace has seen the light, or at least a glimmer of rationality. The group has issued a report accompanied by a press release headlined, 'Plastic Recycling Is A Dead-End Street --Year After Year, Plastic Recycling Declines Even as Plastic Waste Increases.' The group's overall policy remains delusional -- the report proposes a far more harmful alternative to recycling -- but it's nonetheless encouraging to see environmentalists put aside their obsessions long enough to contemplate reality."

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"Congressional investigators have obtained evidence that the Biden administration has launched a sprawling effort to use federally funded job training and food stamp programs to register new voters in Democrat-skewing demographic groups such as young adults and Native Americans, fueling concerns the federal government is placing a partisan thumb on the scales in the midterm elections.

"Part of the plan, spurred by a 2021 executive order by President Joe Biden, is captured in an eight-page memo that the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration sent out in March to state and local officials responsible for providing training to workers in need of jobs.

"The memo explicitly authorizes states to use the American Job Center Network, a federally-funded job training program with more than 2,000 outlets nationwide, to facilitate voter registration among workers seeking its help, specifically targeting Native American, youth and farm workers."

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