Congress returns from recess this week faced with a number of key priorities and deadlines looming — and if that sounds familiar, consider that lawmakers faced a similar scenario in December, passing government funding, the annual military spending bill and suspending the debt limit, preventing the U.S. from defaulting on its debts for the first time in its history.

This time around, Congress is no less busy, and Democrats in the majority would love to have a few key wins to tout ahead of President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on March 1, when campaigns for the 2022 midterm elections will be in full swing.

But what’s on tap for House and Senate Democrats, with their razor-thin majorities, is a daunting endeavor:

• Government funding expires on Feb. 18, with lawmakers on both sides debating a long-term spending bill
• Both chambers of Congress are hoping to reconcile their differences on a bill aimed at improving competitiveness with China, boosting semiconductor production and addressing supply chain issues
• A bipartisan group of lawmakers are looking to reform the Electoral Count Act, a law governing elections brought to light during the Jan. 6 riot
• Democrats are hoping to pick up the pieces of the Build Back Better bill, Biden’s social spending and climate change measure
• And to top it all off, lawmakers must consider President Biden’s eventual pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer

Despite being a short month, Congress has a long road ahead. Here’s a look at what Congress is set to face this month.

February not only brings cold temperatures and icy winds to much of the country, but also a wicked warning: As of Tuesday, government funding runs out in 17 days.

In December, Congress narrowly avoided a shutdown by passing a stopgap funding bill, kicking the can down the road to mid-February. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., emerged from a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, where they affirmed that they want to get a long-term appropriations measure, including new funding levels, rather than a short-term extension which maintains Trump-era funding levels.

Pelosi said that “our focus right now” is on passing an omnibus spending bill through Congress that will fund the government through at least the end of September. 

“We very much want to get an omnibus done,” Schumer said. “We’re all on the same page and we’re awaiting what the Republican counteroffer will be.”

Schumer noted that Democrats are also waiting on the White House to send a proposal for more COVID-19 relief to attach to the omnibus: “We are waiting on the administration to send us something. They haven’t sent us anything on it yet.”

But time is running out to find a “topline” number for the omnibus bill. Punchbowl News reports that a deal on such a figure could be possible by week’s end.

Republicans are seeking “parity” between defense and non-defense spending.

“I want parity. Absolutely. And I’m not by myself,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking GOP member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said on Monday. “America needs parity.”

“And there are other things,” he hinted. “But maybe I’ll have a better feeling by tomorrow.” 

The “Four Corners” — the top Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate appropriations committees — were set to meet Tuesday to hash out an agreement.

Last week, House Democratic leaders unveiled a bill aimed at bolstering the United States’ competitiveness with China, including $52 billion in federal subsidies to boost semiconductor manufacturing.

The bill — known as the America Competes Act — also includes $45 billion to bolster supply chain resilience by funding critical machinery to allow supply chains to continue running amid disruption of global trade routes, as well as the domestic production of essential goods.”

The news comes on the heels of a report from the U.S. Commerce Department warning of a severe computer chip shortage nationwide. Some manufacturers were down to less than five days’ worth of inventory, down from roughly 40 days of supply in 2019, according to a survey of companies conducted by the department in September.

The Senate passed their own version of the bill, known as the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA), a major priority of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., in June of 2021 in a widely bipartisan 68-32 vote.

One of the components the House bill does not contain, compared to its $2.5 billion Senate counterpart, is the nearly $200 billion devoted to bolstering research and development to compete with China. 

But the supply chain funding is seen as largely significant; it could be utilized to “relocate a manufacturing facility out of countries of concern, including countries that pose a significant economic or national security threat to the United States” or establish strategic stockpiles and reserves “to maintain the availability of critical goods during supply chain shocks," the House lawmakers wrote. 

Democrats are focused on making the strong economic recovery under President Biden a key strategy for their defense of their Congressional majorities in the 2022 midterms after whiffing on other major pushes, including a recent push to pass comprehensive voting rights legislation which was blocked by Republicans.

“We do have our eye on the economic recovery,” Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., the vice chair of the Democratic caucus, said. “There will be absolutely pieces of legislation that we discussed that will continue to help alleviate supply chain issues and tamp down inflationary pressures.”

Lawmakers across the country say they’ve heard from their constituents that rising consumer prices, driven in large part by supply chain issues, and have pledged to prioritize the manufacturing bill as a result. 

“Like all of you, I was somewhat shocked at the prices of ordinary groceries,” Pennsylvania Rep. Susan Wild said at a recent town hall. “There is a lot of work that needs to be done to build an economy that works for everybody.”

Wild is one of more than two dozen House Democrats who wrote a letter urging Democratic leadership to put the bill “at the top of the agenda” and bring it to a vote “as soon as possible.”

The legislation has the vehement support of President Biden, who said in a statement that the House’s measure “will make our supply chains stronger and reinvigorate the innovation engine of our economy to outcompete China and the rest of the world for decades to come.”

Speaking of the economy, lawmakers are looking to pick up the pieces of the Build Back Better bill, President Biden’s $1.75 trillion social spending and climate change bill that fell apart at the end of last year when it failed to get the support of crucial moderate Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

At a press conference earlier this month, Biden said that the most likely path forward on the bill would be to break it up.

“It's clear to me that we're probably going to have to break [the bill] up,” Biden said, adding: “I'm confident we can get pieces — big chunks — of the Build Back Better law signed into law.”

"I think we can break the package up, get as much as we can now, come back and fight for the rest later," the president added.

When asked if talks have resumed, Manchin said Tuesday that the bill is “dead” and suggested that lawmakers would have to start from scratch in order to come to a compromise.

“What Build Back Better bill?” Manchin said Tuesday, adding: “No, no, no no. It’s dead.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that they are "fighting hard for Build Back Better" and they are "are continuing to work on it."

Manchin said he remains open to talks, though said formal negotiations have not yet taken place.

“Whatever we are going to come up with, anything you want to be put on the table, we can talk about,” Manchin said, signaling the possibility of new discussions.

“If we're talking about the whole big package, that’s gone,” he later clarified, but regarding a smaller version of the bill, he said: “We’ll see what people come up with. I don't know.”

"There’s no formal talks going on now, but the bill as it was ... would probably be structured different if they do anything," Manchin said later Tuesday. "We always start at scratch, but things have changed since then."

Manchin has previously signaled support for a number of the bill’s provisions, including the $550 billion to combat climate change and universal pre-Kindergarten. Biden touted those areas of consensus, as well as parts that fellow moderate holdout Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., also agree upon.

Meanwhile, a group of nearly two dozen House Democrats penned a letter to President Biden on Monday, asking the White House not to toss out climate and clean energy investments in upcoming negotiations, which represent the largest legislative investment ever to fight climate change.

Led by Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., the 23 Democrats urged Biden “in the strongest possible terms to move swiftly to finalize the most comprehensive legislation that can pass the Senate and get this historic progress to your desk for your signature in the coming weeks.” 

“The need to act on the climate crisis while centering environmental justice and creating and sustaining millions of good-paying union jobs has never been more important,” the group added. “In communities across the country, we are already seeing staggering climate damages.”

As originally proposed, the Biden bill offers incentives for electric car purchases, development of technology to capture and store carbon emissions, and construction of wind and solar farms, among other provisions. 

House Democrats who signed Monday’s letter said the provisions are needed in order to achieve the United States’ goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Biden has predicted that “we would be able to get support for the $500 billion plus for energy and the environment.”

A group of Senate Democrats on Tuesday unveiled a bill which would reform the Electoral Count Act, an 1887 law about the counting and certification of electoral votes which has been in the spotlight since the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Sens. Angus King, I-Maine, Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and Dick Durbin, D-Ill., shared their draft proposal, the Electoral Count Modernization Act, which would increase the number of lawmakers needed to object to the results from a state in both chambers of Congress, as well as clarifies that the vice president’s role in the count is ceremonial.

The announcement comes just days after former President Donald Trump said in a statement that he wanted then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of the election on Jan. 6. Trump falsely claimed that Pence had the power to do so under the ECA, which Pence himself said that he did not have.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a Republican who is leading separate bipartisan discussions, said that Trump’s comments “underscore the need for us to revise the Electoral Count Act because they demonstrated the confusion in the law and the fact that it is ambiguous.”

A group of lawmakers from both parties have been working for weeks on reforming the bill, but Collins noted they are still in the “early stages.” The group is modeling their work in a similar fashion to the working group that negotiated the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill, which passed last year.

“We need to clarify how the Electoral Count Act works,” Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman told CNN when asked about Trump’s false comments.

“Part of the problem is there's so much ambiguity and confusion about it. If you've looked at the statute, it's long and complicated,” Portman said, adding: “I think we'll get something done.”

The group is looking into a number of issues, including threatening poll workers and election officials.

“One of the issues that many of our members, including myself, are interested in is making sure that we have federal penalties for interfering with or threatening an election official or poll worker with violence,” Collins said.

The Democratic trio called their version a “discussion draft,” a proposal which “serves as a foundational outline for key reforms that address the shortcomings of the 1887 law.”

“We recognize that updating the Electoral Count Act is not a substitute for confronting the wider crises facing our democracy. We continue to support legislation to protect voting rights prior to Election Day, and strongly believe that we must clarify ambiguities in the electoral process after Election Day to truly ensure the will of the voters will prevail,” they wrote.

“We stand ready to share the knowledge we have accumulated with our colleagues from both parties, and look forward to contributing to a strong, bipartisan effort aimed at resolving this issue and strengthening our democracy,” the three lawmakers wrote in joint a statement.

As if all that wasn’t enough, lawmakers will soon have to vet and vote to confirm President Biden’s first Supreme Court nomination of his presidency. 

Biden met Tuesday with Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin and Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to consult with them about his potential replacement for retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.

"Selecting a justice is one of the president's most serious responsibilities," Biden said of the duty to replace Breyer, as he sat in the Oval Office with Durbin, Grassley and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Biden said that while there are "several schools of thought in terms of judicial philosophy," he is looking for a "candidate with character, with the qualities of a judge in terms of being courteous to the folks before them and treating people with respect, as well as a judicial philosophy that is more one that suggests that there are unenumerated rights in the Constitution.”

The president has pledged to make good on a campaign promise by nominating a Black woman to serve on the high court, a first in U.S. history.

“The person I will nominate will be someone with extraordinary qualifications, character, experience and integrity and that person will be the first black woman ever nominated to the United States Supreme Court,” Biden said at an event last week. “It's long overdue in my opinion, I made that commitment during the campaign for president, and I will keep that commitment.”

Some of the judges Biden is expected to consider include Ketanji Brown Jackson, a circuit judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Michelle Childs, a U.S. District Court judge for the District of South Carolina, and Leondra Kruger, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of California.

Biden’s comments sparked criticism among some Republicans, despite the fact that the president has not yet put forward a nominee.

“The fact that he is willing to make a promise at the outset that it must be a Black woman I've got to say that's offensive,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said on his podcast. “Black women are what, 6% of the U.S. population? He's saying to 94% of Americans 'I don't give a damn about you, you are ineligible.”

Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker said that the nominee would be the “beneficiary” of affirmative action, calling it “irony” that the high court agreed to hear a case which could have a major impact on race-based consideration in college admissions.

“The irony is that the Supreme Court is at the very same time hearing cases about this sort of affirmative racial discrimination while adding someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota,” Wicker said in an interview.

White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates responded to Wicker’s comments by saying that Biden’s pledge to select a Black woman “is in line with the best traditions of both parties and our nation.”  

Bates went on to reference former President Ronald Reagan’s promise to nominate the first woman to the Supreme Court — selecting Sandra Day O’Connor in 1981 — and referenced Wicker’s own comments when Biden’s predecessor, former President Donald Trump, pledged to nominate a woman to the Supreme Court last year.

“When the previous president followed through on his own promise to place a woman on the Supreme Court, Senator Wicker said, 'I have five granddaughters, the oldest one is 10. I think Justice Amy Coney Barrett will prove to be an inspiration to these five granddaughters and to my grown daughters,” Bates said, adding: “We hope Senator Wicker will give President Biden's nominee the same consideration he gave to then-Judge Barrett.”

Other Republicans have not commented on aspects of race or gender, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, who said they would judge the pick on their qualifications.

In a 50-50 Senate, it's highly unlikely that Republicans would be able to block a Biden pick without a Democratic defection, and both moderate Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have voted to support every one of President Biden's judicial picks.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said that Vice President Kamala Harris could break a possible 50-50 tie on a Supreme Court nominee, which would be a first in U.S. history, but she hoped that would not be necessary: "Our intention is, of course, to get broad support for an eminently qualified nominee."

Manchin told reporters Monday that he is "anxious" to confirm a successor to Breyer.

"I’m just in favor of basically filling the court and making sure we don’t have a vacancy there for any time at all," Manchin said Monday. "So yes, absolutely, let’s move forward."

Manchin said he thought Biden was considering "excellent names" and said that "the time has come" to pick a Black woman for the high court.

"I think it's great to have this many extremely qualified people that can serve and I think serve justice," he said. "It's basically just a balance that needs to be done to represent who we are as a nation."

"Soon, President Biden will have an opportunity to make the Supreme Court look more like America by nominating the first Black woman in U.S. history to serve as a Justice," Majority Leader Schumer said Tuesday. "Every single member of this chamber, regardless of party, should embrace the President's commitment to make sure our courts, and especially the Supreme Court, better reflect our country's diversity, and nominating a Black woman as Justice is a long overdue step toward achieving that goal."

Schumer pledged the Senate will "move quickly" once the pick is announced. "We'll have a fair process, but also a quick process so that the work of the Supreme Court continues uninterrupted."

Some Democrats are hoping to have the length of the confirmation process be similar to that for Justice Barrett, who was confirmed 30 days after her nomination in 2020.

But some Republicans are hoping to slow that process down; Sen. Collins said that "there is no need for any rush."

"I felt that the timetable for the last nominee was too compressed," the Maine Republican told reporters last week, referring to Justice Barrett's confirmation. "This time, there is no need for any rush. We can take our time, have hearings, go through the process — which is a very important one. It is a lifetime appointment, after all

."It’s possible that some Republicans may actually back Biden’s pick. 

Judge Jackson received the support of three Republican Senators during her confirmation hearing last year: Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Collins.

And on Sunday, Sen. Graham lavished praise on his fellow South Carolinian Judge Childs during an appearance on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

"I can't think of a better person for President Biden to consider for the Supreme Court than Michelle Childs,” Graham said. “She has wide support in our state, she's considered to be a fair-minded, highly gifted jurist. She's one of the most decent people I've ever met.”

“She's highly qualified,” he added. “She’s a good character, and we'll see how she does if she's nominated. But I cannot say anything bad about Michelle Childs. She is an awesome person.”

Childs also has the support of House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, who helped deliver Biden a crucial victory in the state’s primary, which helped fuel his presidential bid through the rough-and-tumble 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

Graham pushed back on some of his fellow Republicans’ assertions about imposing race and gender on his nomination, citing Reagan’s nomination of O’Connor.

“President Reagan said running for office that he wanted to put the first female on the court,” Graham said. “Whether you like it or not, Joe Biden said, 'I'm going to pick an African-American woman to serve on the Supreme Court.”

"I believe there are plenty of qualified African-American women, conservative and liberal, that could go on to the court,” he continued. “So I don't see Michelle Childs as an act of affirmative action. I do see putting a Black woman on the court, making the court more like America. So let's make the court more like America, but qualifications have to be the biggest consideration.

“And as to Michelle Childs, I think she is qualified by every measure,” he added.

Biden said Tuesday that it is his "hope" to have his decision on who he will nominate by the end of the month.