Entering its last scheduled week before the Christmas holiday, Congress has at least three major orders of business to tend to. 

Adding to the week’s intrigue, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will stop by the Capitol, and Hunter Biden might, too.

Lawmakers could vote in the coming days on formally launching an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, on authorizing national defense spending and on passing the president’s $106 billion supplemental funding request aimed at helping Ukraine and Israel as well as securing the U.S.-Mexico border.

Ukraine, Israel and border security

The Biden administration is asking Congress for $106 billion. The package includes $61.4 billion to help Ukraine in its war against Russia and $14.3 billion to aid Israel in its conflict with Hamas.

The request also includes $13.6 billion for U.S. border security and $7.5 for efforts to counter China, including aid for Taiwan. 

Many Republicans say they are against bundling all the initiatives into a single package. There has been growing opposition in the GOP around financial support for Ukraine, and Republican lawmakers have been unsatisfied with the border security measures proposed by the president.

Many GOP members have said they will not support additional Ukraine aid without meaningful policy changes on border security, while some have indicated they won’t vote to help Ukraine under any circumstance. Last week, Senate Republicans blocked the supplemental funding bill from being debated.

“The Biden Administration’s southern border crisis is out of control,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wrote on X, formerly Twitter, last week. “America’s national security begins with securing our nation’s borders. And supplemental legislation must begin there, too.”

Biden and his aides have warned that the security of U.S. allies could be in jeopardy if the funding is not approved. 

“In terms of what it would mean for Ukraine, what it would mean for Israel, what it would mean for our efforts to be competitive in the Indo-Pacific, I think the only people who'd be happy if the supplemental budget request is not voted on and approved by Congress are sitting in Moscow, sitting in Tehran, sitting in Beijing,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Zelenskyy will travel to Washington on Tuesday to make his case for additional aid. The Ukrainian president will attend an all-senators meetings in the morning and later sit down separately with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Joe Biden.

Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., have been negotiating a deal, but both signaled in separate interviews Sunday that little progress was made over the weekend.

Impeachment inquiry

Johnson promised last week to hold a floor vote on authorizing a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden. The House Rules Committee is scheduled to hold a session Tuesday to mark up the resolution formalizing the inquiry. 

The chairs of the three committees leading the investigation have all claimed they have evidence linking Joe Biden to his son Hunter’s foreign business deals. However, to date, House Republicans have not produced any solid evidence proving Joe Biden profited from his son’s business deals or that Hunter Biden’s professional interests influenced the elder Biden’s actions as vice president in the Obama administration. 

Joe Biden has repeatedly denied having any involvement in or knowledge about Hunter Biden’s business affairs. 

Then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy authorized an impeachment inquiry in September without a vote, citing Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of President Donald Trump as precedent. 

Johnson suggested last week that a House vote would give the investigation more legitimacy in subpoenaing witnesses and collecting other potential evidence. 

McCarthy had resisted calling for the authorization vote over concerns that House Republicans, who can afford no more than three defections in their slim majority, did not have the votes needed, particularly among members who represent swing districts. But in the three months since, there seems to have been a shift in the thinking of at least some of those lawmakers. 

“Two months ago, it seemed to me the administration was providing information,” Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., told The New York Times last week. “But now this past week, they said, ‘Well, without a formal inquiry vote, we’re not going to give this information.’ So, I feel like we’ve got to do it.”

The White House has accused House Republicans of “trying to invent claims of ‘obstruction’ and ‘stonewalling’ to rationalize their illegitimate so-called ‘impeachment inquiry.’”

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden has been subpoenaed to provide closed-door testimony Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee. The president’s son has offered to testify publicly, with his lawyer saying it would “ensure transparency.” The Oversight Committee responded by saying it would begin contempt proceedings against Hunter Biden if he does not comply with the subpoena.

It’s unclear whether the president’s son will appear on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. The office of Hunter Biden’s attorney did not respond to an email from Spectrum News on Monday seeking clarification.

National Defense Authorization Act

The Senate could pass the annual defense authorization bill as soon as Wednesday.

The proposed $874 billion package would fully authorize a trilateral nuclear-powered submarine agreement with Britain and Australia, require a Defense Department training program for Taiwanese troops and establish a special inspector general for Ukraine aid, to name a few items.

Perhaps the most debated aspect of the NDAA unveiled last week is a provision extending Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. 

Section 702 allows the U.S. government to conduct targeted surveillance of foreign people outside of the United States. While the law bars investigators from using it to target Americans or anyone on domestic soil, sometimes communications between them and foreign subjects are captured in the process and kept in a database.

In May, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a FISA Court ruling that found the FBI improperly searched for information on U.S. citizens in the database 278,000 times over several years. The subjects of the search included Capitol riot suspects, political campaign donors and protesters following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd, the court said.

Section 702 is set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress reauthorizes it. Members of both parties have expressed concerns about doing so without reforms.

Some Republican lawmakers, including members of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, opposed attaching Section 702 reauthorization to the must-pass NDAA. Johnson wrote in a letter to colleagues last week that the bill includes a short-term Section 702 extension through April 19 to “provide the necessary time to facilitate the reform process in a manner that will not conflict with our existing appropriations deadlines and other conflicts.”

Afterward, the Freedom Caucus said in a statement: “The Members of the House Freedom Caucus are prepared to use all available leverage to change the status quo. We will not simply vote ‘no’ on bad legislation and go home for Christmas.”

The Senate and House are both scheduled to recess Thursday until January, although leaders could order them to stay later.