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In Today’s Times:

– As the Senate prepares to vote this week on the New Start nuclear arms treaty with Russia, the White House may have to fight to keep enough lawmakers on board to gain ratification. The Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, announced his opposition to the treaty on Sunday. Peter Baker and David Herszenhorn write that the big question now is whether and how aggressively Mr. McConnell will lobby members of his caucus to oppose the treaty, and whether lawmakers who unsuccessfully opposed repealing the military’s ban on openly gay service members will withdraw their support for the nuclear pact.

– After winning a repeal of the military policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell,” activists  — especially the press watchdog Media Matters — are shifting their energies to fight for same-sex marriage, Sheryl Stolberg writes.

– John Harwood runs through the legislative victories that Senator Harry Reid has won as majority leader. He also asks whether the tax deal that lawmakers passed last week could serve as a template for bipartisanship in the next Congress, when Republicans take the reins of the House.

–Kate Zernike picks up on efforts by opponents of the Democrats’ health care overhaul to push an amendment to the Constitution that would allow two-thirds of the 50 state legislature to repeal any act of Congress. The proposed amendment ultimately “must be approved by both chambers of Congress — requiring them to agree, in this case, to check their own power — and then by three-quarters of, or 38, state legislatures.”

–Eric Pfanner draws lessons from Google and Britain to warn of the downsides of a potential American prosecution of Julan Assange, concluding, “This is one war in which most of the collateral damage would be American.”

Around the Web:

–In what The Hill calls a “Sunday-evening surprise,” the Senate passed a long-delayed food safety bill by unanimous consent, sending the legislation back to the House for final passage.

–The Obama administration is nearing a border security deal with Canada that will address the screening of people crossing the border, examining cargo leaving foreign ports bound for the United States or Canada, and increasing information-sharing and intelligence cooperation, according to The Globe and Mail (via The Wall Street Journal).

–For a preview of how the House and Senate leadership will work together in the next Congress, Congressional Quarterly points to the two disparate schedules released by Mr. Reid and Representative Eric Cantor, the incoming House majority leader.

–Representative Peter King wrote in Newsday that he plans to hold hearings on the radicalization of American Muslims and homegrown terrorism when he takes over the House Committee on Homeland Security. But the head of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told The Associated Press he’s concerned that the hearings might become a witch hunt.

–Republicans may be taking over the House in January after handing Democrats a 63-seat loss, but Representative Steve Israel, Democrat of New York and chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told The Washington Post that he’s confident the party can win the 25 seats needed to regain control in 2012.

–The Hill reports that Senators Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, both New York Democrats, have struck a deal with Republicans to pass a health care bill for emergency responders and nearby residents sickened or injured as a result of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. The bill could come up for a vote this week, and would need final approval from the House.

–CQ has the list of high-profile nominees to the Obama administration who await confirmation with three weeks to go in the lame-duck session.

–The Hill also notes that earmark requests are becoming an early scourge in undeclared and nascent 2012 Senate campaigns.

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Anyone watching the final few days of the 111th Congress this week could be excused for being completely confused.

Faced with a mountain of legislation to get finished in just a matter of days, the country’s lawmakers have taken a series of actions that – to those not steeped in legislative arcana or political minutia – seemed simply odd.

The Capitol is always a place where things can seem backwards. Laying a bill down, for example, means that lawmakers are preparing for it to be brought up. It’s a place where, as a Times colleague noted, a bill can be gaining momentum and failing all at the same time.

But even in that environment, this week’s news out of Congress has often seemed puzzling — especially in the Senate, where the majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, was trying to orchestrate a series of votes before senators are scheduled to leave at the end of next week.

The most confounding process may have been on the debate over the effort to repeal the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars gay people from serving openly.

For much of the week, support for that repeal (which was included as part of a massive defense spending bill) appeared to include almost all of the Democrats and a handful of Republicans – enough to stop a filibuster that was certain to come.

But as the price for their support, the Republicans were insisting on certain procedural promises: an opportunity to offer enough amendments and plenty of time to debate the legislation. For days, Mr. Reid negotiated with Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, who is supportive of repealing the policy.

Finally, on Wednesday evening, a vote was anticipated. Then it was canceled, only to be tentatively set for Thursday morning at 11:45. But that time passed with no vote. Advocates for repeal breathed a sigh of relief when the delay was announced, believing that Mr. Reid was allowing negotiations with Ms. Collins to continue.

And then, mysteriously, Mr. Reid appeared on the floor of the Senate. In remarks to a mostly empty chamber, he argued strenuously for repeal of the policy. But in a series of legislative requests, he forced the measure to a vote, saying that negotiations with Ms. Collins had broken down and that he, essentially, knew it would fail.

Ms. Collins raced into the chamber, saying she was stunned by the move and accusing Mr. Reid of abandoning negotiations that were going well. Democrats were caught off guard — Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas reportedly missed the vote because she was at the dentist. Sure enough, 15 minutes later, the votes were in and Democrats had failed. Repeal advocates sent out angry emails, believing it to be dead for the year.

Only it’s not. Quite. Moments after the bill’s defeat, three senators — Ms. Collins, independent Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Senator Mark Udall of Colorado — introduced the repeal again, this time without being attached to the defense spending legislation. Mr. Reid quickly announced he will co-sponsor the stand-alone legislation and would use the Senate’s “Rule 14” to skip committee consideration and bring it to the floor.

Which prompted even veteran political reporters to look up “Rule 14” in their legislative handbooks.

The confounding action was not limited to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” debate.

Mr. Reid also scheduled a series of votes on other issues, knowing that they would likely fail with no Republican support. But even consideration of those bills got complicated.

On the Dream Act, which provides a patch to citizenship for people who were brought to the country illegally as small children, Mr. Reid yanked the bill at the last minute, appearing to give up. In fact, aides said that Mr. Reid was pulling a legislative switch-a-roo by deciding that the Senate would vote, instead, on the House version of the same legislation.

“Stay tuned,” he announced.

Over in the House, where Democrats are living out their last few days in the majority, they chose to take advantage by picking a fight — with President Obama. Angry Democratic lawmakers voted behind closed doors to reject the tax compromise worked out by Mr. Obama and Republicans.

Debate and voting on the tax legislation could begin by this weekend in the Senate, which laid down the bill late Thursday night.

And since its down, it’s ready to be taken up.

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Members of the House are likely to have some changes to their routine next year, based on a calendar released Wednesday by Representative Eric Cantor, the soon-to-be House majority leader.

The new calendar would keep the House in session for 123 days next year, a number Mr. Cantor says is roughly in line with previous first sessions of a Congress. But, in a letter to colleagues, Mr. Cantor, of Virginia, added that the scheduled number of session weeks – 32 – is an 11 percent drop from past first sessions.

In general, the 2011 House schedule plans to give members at least a full week each month to be home in their districts, while lawmakers will, by and large, be in Washington four days during the weeks the House is in session. In recent years, House members have often been in Washington from Tuesday to Thursday, before many of them jet back to their districts.

The new Congress is set to convene on Jan. 5, and the House is scheduled to adjourn for 2011 on Dec. 8 – exactly one year from today.

In his letter, Mr. Cantor said the changes to the calendar would give lawmakers more certainty about their schedules and increase efficiency. To that end, he said he intended to usually limit floor votes to the afternoon or early evening, and to make legislation available both three days before it is marked up by a committee and three days before it is considered on the House floor.

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It’s nothing personal, Chi Chi Rodriguez.

Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the soon-to-be speaker of the House, and two other Republican lawmakers on Thursday laid out proposed rule changes for the next Congress – which include mandating that spending on new programs be offset by budget cuts and changing how more ceremonial measures are dealt with.

At a news conference, Mr. Boehner and Representatives Greg Walden of Oregon and Rob Bishop of Utah declared that the changes would allow the House to better serve the people — and they took a couple of shots at how Democrats had been running the chamber.

“You’ve found out, I think, in the past few years that when you have good process, good policy will result,” Mr. Bishop said. “And if you have a poor process, we continue to do what we’ve been doing the last couple of years.”

The entire G.O.P. conference is expected to pass the proposals, though its members have yet to consider them.

Currently, the House approves commemorative measures with some frequency, including separate resolutions this week that praised the golfer Chi Chi Rodriguez for helping out Hispanic youth programs and commended an Arkansas city for its partnership with an Air Force base.

The Republican proposals aim to restrict those measures’ access to the floor. “Now, there’s nothing wrong with Chi Chi and there’s nothing wrong with Arkansas,” said Mr. Walden, who is leading the G.O.P transition efforts. But, he added, “this is not the message, this is not the work that the American people sent us here to do.”

In an attempt to rein in spending, the transition team is also recommending that certain legislation creating a new program be forced to roll back or do away with a program of the same or greater size. (Similarly, increases in appropriations or authorizations would also have to be offset.)

“Today, the rules in Congress are rigged to make it easy to increase spending and almost impossible to cut spending,” Mr. Boehner said.

Under the new policies, the House Republican conference’s rules would also have to be posted on the Internet.

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As Democrats and Republicans struggle to agree on which bills to pass in Congress’ crowded lame-duck session, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers may find themselves struggling just to make ends meet. That’s because Congress has not passed an extension for long-term unemployment benefits, the payments the federal government sends to laid-off workers who have [...]

As Democrats and Republicans struggle to agree on which bills to pass in Congress’ crowded lame-duck session, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers may find themselves struggling just to make ends meet. That’s because Congress has not passed an extension for long-term unemployment benefits, the payments the federal government sends to laid-off workers who have [...]