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Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will convene a meeting of Congressional leaders of both parties in the Capitol in Thursday afternoon in an effort to find a way out of a spending dispute that has the entire government operating under a stop-gap budget.

The White House announced that what could be the first of several sessions would be held at 4 p.m. Also taking part from the Obama administration will be the White House chief of staff, William M. Daley, and Jacob Lew, the budget director. President Obama called for the negotiations on Wednesday.

When they first heard of the planned talks, Republicans were unenthusiastic since Democrats had not yet made public their own plan for spending cuts and the House had approved $61 billion in reductions. But Republicans said they would take part. They continued to press on Thursday for a Democratic proposal.

“Republicans are happy to go,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, said. “But putting a meeting on the schedule doesn’t change the fact that neither the White House nor a single Democrat in Congress has proposed a plan that would allow the government to remain open and that would respond to the voters by reining in spending. All we get is talk.”

The current interim spending bill passed by the Senate and signed by the president Wednesday expires March 18, giving Congress and the administration two weeks to strike a deal to fund the government through Sept. 30, pass another short-term measure or see parts of the government shut down.

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The House returns from a short break this week to consider a temporary renewal of provisions of the anti-terror Patriot Act and to prepare for a budget showdown with the Senate and the White House.

House leaders also plan a vote later in the week to direct House committees to inventory “existing, pending and proposed regulations and orders” from the Obama administration with respect to their impact on jobs and the economy in a search for ammunition to use against White House regulatory initiatives.

Taking on another favorite topic of conservative Republicans, the House is also set to vote on a proposal to force the United Nations to return $179 million in overpayments to a tax fund.

The United Nations proposal is among those that Republicans are promoting as evidence that they are serious about protecting tax dollars. But lawmakers were chastised on Sunday by former Republican Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, co-chair of a deficit-reduction commission, who noted that efforts like reducing waste and eliminating earmarks will not produce the types of savings needed to make headway against the deficit.

“If you have a career politician get up and say, ‘I know we can get this done. We’re going to get rid of all earmarks, all waste, fraud and abuse, all foreign aid, Air Force One, all congressional pensions,’ ” Mr. Simpson said on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “that’s a sparrow’s belch in the midst of a typhoon. That’s about 6, 8, 10 percent of where we are.

“So I’m waiting for the politician to get up and say, there’s only one way to do this, you dig into the big four: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and defense.”

Off the floor, lawmakers will be assembling their plan to fund the government through the rest of the year to replace the stop-gap measure that expires on March 4. A vote is expected next week.

In the Senate, lawmakers are set to consider three federal district court nominees for Arkansas, Oregon and Texas and resume debate over the renewal of Federal Aviation Administration programs. Democratic senators will spend much of the week at a policy retreat in Virginia.

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The Senate is scheduled to take up its first legislation of the 112th Congress this week and it looks like it will be a long-stalled renewal of Federal Aviation Administration programs.

After wrapping up the rules and filibuster fight last Thursday, Senator Harry Reid, the majority leader, said the Senate would begin reviewing the nation’s aviation operations, a measure Mr. Reid described as a “huge job-creating bill.”

“At the minimum, this bill will create more than 100,000 jobs,” Mr. Reid said. “It will do it by investing in airport infrastructure and improving aviation technology in every state in the nation.”

The F.A.A. bill expires at the end of March and its programs have been repeatedly extended since the original measure lapsed back in 2007. Industry officials have complained that the lack of certainty over the bill has inhibited investment..

The legislation does not get much attention outside of aviation and airport industry circles, but it is a source of parochial fights over airline access to airports, fees on airlines and private plane owners, and other insider issues. The rights of the flying public will also be part of the debate, which could involve multiple attempts to amend the measure under the new Senate rules agreement.

A major dispute that has stalled the measure is a proposal to grant new labor-organizing opportunities to workers at Federal Express, a plan that has been opposed by many Republicans. The shift in House control could influence how that battle plays out.

With Senate leaders trying to restore the Senate to a more traditional level of give and take, Mr. Reid promised that lawmakers would have ample opportunity to try and reshape the measure on the floor.

“This is the time for a good, old-fashioned Senate debate, something that will help the American people,” he said.

Mr. Reid also indicated he is preparing to move ahead with legislation governing small business programs, another bill that he portrayed as a job creator.

The Senate could spend a fair amount of time on the bills since Democrats, eying the new Republican majority in the House, are still mapping out their agenda and approach for the coming months. In addition, Senate committees were only finally constituted last week and Mr. Reid and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, are still hashing out some committee funding issues.

The House is in recess this week.

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The House will try to return to some sense of normalcy Tuesday when lawmakers begin debate over the Republican plan to repeal the new health care law.

Ten days after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, the Republican-led House will reconvene in what both sides acknowledge is a changed political atmosphere.

But Republicans have no intention of dropping their push to roll back the health care legislation, though the vote set for Wednesday is unlikely to be repeated anytime soon in the Senate. Following the repeal, the House is set to vote on a measure directing the relevant committees to come up with legislation to replace the health law.

While House Democrats know they can’t stop the Republicans from assembling the votes for repeal, they intend to make their case on and off the floor. The Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, plans an event on Tuesday to try to showcase new health care coverage that Americans would lose if the law was overturned.

“Americans want Congress to focus on creating jobs, strengthening the middle class and reducing the deficit, not the Republican plan to repeal patients’ rights and hand power over our health decisions back to insurance companies,” Ms Pelosi said.

Both parties have indicated they will try to tone down the discourse in what no doubt would have been a charged debate before the shooting rampage. The House is only in session a few days this week, allowing Democrats to travel to Maryland’s Eastern Shore for their policy retreat after Republicans held their own meeting last week in Baltimore.

The Senate remains in recess until next week. Technically, it is still Jan. 5 in the chamber, since senators recessed instead of adjourning to keep the Senate in its first legislative day to allow Democrats to press their efforts to change Senate rules. That clash will resume next week unless Senate leaders can strike some agreement on changes to satisfy Democrats, who contend Republicans abused the rules to delay legislation and nominations over the past two years.

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It might seem like members of the 111th Congress just left, but the 112th Congress arrives Wednesday, bringing with it an extensive new cast of lawmakers and Republican control of the House.

More than 90 new House members and a dozen new senators will take the oath of office when the House and Senate convene at noon on Wednesday. Shortly thereafter, Nancy Pelosi will turn over the speaker’s gavel and the management of the House to John A. Boehner of Ohio, a 20-year Congressional veteran who will complete an extraordinary return from exile after he lost a leadership position in 1998.

House Republicans will no doubt want to quickly put their stamp on the House and will start with a public reading of the Constitution, in recognition of the Constitution-embracing Tea Party movement that helped propel Republicans to a 63 seat-gain in the House in the November elections.

Republicans will then turn their sights on repeal of the health care law, as well as trying to follow through with their campaign pledges to cut spending and make House operations more transparent.

“We are going to be cutting the size of government, we are going to be cutting the deficit and we’re going to do it on the spending side, not by raising taxes,” Representative Fred Upton, the Michigan Republican in line to chair the Energy and Commerce Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “And a year from now I think you’ll see the evidence of what we do in the House, for sure.”

Not all of the new members are new to Congress. The House has a handful of Republicans who took back the House seats they lost in 2008, and the Republicans arriving in the Senate include a former Republican senator, three just-departed members of the House and two former Republican House members.

Both parties are still trying to figure out how the new division on Capitol Hill will work in a practical sense, given control of the House by conservative Republicans matched up with a Senate that will still be managed by Senator Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat and majority leader. It is certain to be contentious and expectations for much consensus are low at the moment.

And Democrats say that Republicans, after two years in the minority under full Democratic control, are likely to find things a bit different now that they share some responsibility for governing.

“You’ve got to remember,” Representative Elijah Cummings, Democrat of Maryland, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” “they’ve been on the sidelines throwing spit balls saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no.”

“Now they’ve got to do something,” Mr. Cummings said.

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Congress continues its lame-duck march toward Christmas this week with just a handful of critical issues still undecided after the Senate’s weekend repeal of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military and the defeat of an immigration measure.

“We have very few things left to do,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told his weary colleagues as they met for Sunday afternoon votes on a nuclear arms control treaty with Russia.

But the things they have left could take some time.

Mr. Reid sought to clarify the calendar on Sunday by taking steps to force votes on a stop-gap spending measure to keep the government operating through March 4. He also moved to limit debate on the New Start nuclear arms treaty with Russia as early as Tuesday.

In the meantime, the Senate is scheduled to continue the debate on New Start on Monday, with lawmakers spending most of the day discussing the treaty and meeting in a closed session in the old Senate chamber to consider classified aspects of the pact.

The spending measure is critical since the current short-term law expires Tuesday, and Congress cannot adjourn without making some provision for keeping the federal government running for the next few months. Senate leaders had been in talks over the bill since a huge spending package collapsed last week, but they were unable to come to an agreement that could move through the Congress without opposition.

The measure the Senate will vote on this Tuesday continues spending at current levels into March but makes special provisions for “certain programs that would otherwise expire or be severely disrupted.” Among those provisions was one to keep the college-aid Pell Grants at current levels to prevent a drop in the maximum award.

The House is set to return on Tuesday to give its approval to the funding measure and doesn’t have much else to do to complete the year since the arms control treaty is strictly a Senate affair.

However, New York’s two Democratic senators, Charles E. Schumer and Kirstin Gillibrand, said Sunday they still had hopes of winning approval this week of a health program for those made ill by toxic substances at ground zero.

They said that Mr. Reid has promised to bring the measure to the Senate floor as soon as the Start treaty is wrapped up. But because of changes in the proposal, it would require House approval, as well. The senators said they hoped to persuade the House leadership to stay in session or even return for another vote if they can get the measure through the Senate.

At the moment, it appears that Start cannot be resolved before Wednesday, creating a real time crunch for the 9/11 measure.

The Senate could also still approve a major Pentagon policy bill that has passed the House. Mr. Reid and Mr. McConnell are also working on a package of executive branch and judicial nominations that could move through the Senate before the 111th Congress is history.

And a food safety bill passed again by the Senate Sunday night after a territorial dispute between the Senate and House could also be sent to the president if the House approves it this week.

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