By Emily Russell

The House and Senate return to work in Washington on Tuesday -- and their to-do lists are long.

After a two-week recess, Congress will have to deal with several high-priority issues, including the continuing partial government shutdown, the White House's recent $1.8 trillion budget proposal, and the war in Iran.

Here are four items Congress will likely take up this week:

Funding the Department of Homeland Security

DHS has been shut down for 55 days. Transportation Security Administration workers are getting paid, thanks to an executive order that President Donald Trump signed on March 27. But Congress still needs to pass a bill to fund the rest of the department.

Just hours before the Senate left for recess last month, it passed a bill that would fund all of DHS except for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection. That bill then failed a vote in the House.

Once back in session, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) will have to either corral the more conservative faction of his conference, who believe ICE and CPB funding shouldn't be broken off from a broader DHS funding bill, into approving the Senate's DHS funding bill or put forth a viable bill of his own.

Johnson indicated this week that he wouldn't hold a vote on the Senate's DHS bill until he sees the upper chamber take action on a reconciliation bill to fund ICE and CPB.

Reconciliation 2.0

Senate Republicans could start the process next week of trying to pass funding for ICE and CPB and potentially additional defense spending through a party-line reconciliation vote. They last used the reconciliation process to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July, and aim to have Reconciliation 2.0 on the floor by the end of the month

Trump wants to sign a bill by June 1, which might be a squeeze for legislators.

"It is a very arduous process," Chris Towner, policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, says of reconciliation. "It was pretty amazing they managed to do the last one. I would be shocked if they could do it again."

Trump is complicating the process by pressuring lawmakers to tack voter-ID requirements in the SAVE America Act onto the bill. But congressional rules make clear that only budget-related items can be voted on via reconciliation, and Senate Speaker John Thune (R., S.D.) has said he doesn't have the votes to support the SAVE America Act.

Regardless of whether reconciliation funding is passed, ICE and CPB will still be funded through last year's OBBB Act.

"They already have enough money for these agencies," Towner says. "Obviously this is more of a political question."

The President's Budget Proposal

Congress will begin the multistep process of marking up the White House's $1.8 billion budget request for fiscal year 2027, which it submitted to lawmakers on April 3.

The budget debate will pit Congress's deficit hawks against its defense hawks. Trump asked for $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, hundreds of billions more than the defense budget for the current fiscal year. It would be the biggest annual increase in the military budget as a share of gross domestic product in the past 50 years, according to the Center for American Progress.

The national deficit has already increased by more than $1.1 trillion this year, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Despite slashing nondefense funding by $73 billion -- including a 13% cut to National Institutes of Health funding and a $1.5 billion cut to the TSA budget -- the president's proposal "would do nothing to help the deficit" Towner says.

Trump's budget will likely face pushback from members of both parties.

"These are very big cuts. There isn't bipartisan, or frankly for a lot of them, even Republican support for them," says Brendan Duke, senior director for federal budget policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The Iran war is also placing a spotlight on the country's fiscal picture; the Pentagon spent $11 billion in its first week of war alone.

The War in Iran

Democrats have few avenues to check the president's ability to wage war in Iran. Their most recent attempt to do so through a war powers resolution was shot down in a pro forma session in the House on April 9.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) said his chamber would vote on another resolution to limit Trump's war efforts next week. That will force Republicans to take a public stance on the war, which is unpopular with the vast majority of Americans. According to Brown University, the war has cost Americans more than $17 billion in extra gas and diesel prices.

Congress will also get its first chance to publicly question administration officials under oath about the war when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll testifies before the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

Write to emily.russell@barrons.com.

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April 13, 2026 01:00 ET (05:00 GMT)

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