WASHINGTON NEW YEAR: RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE OLD

Normally a new Congress gets off to a slow start, taking weeks and sometimes a few months to get down to serious business. The opening day is largely ceremonial, including Nancy Pelosi's turning over the Speaker's gavel to John Boehner. One of the first bits of business being the introduction or rather the re-introduction of hundreds of bills that have gone nowhere in the past and have no future. They are simply bills close to the heart of a Representative or Senator or bills intended to please certain individuals or interest groups back home or wherever.

But there are two bills to be watched. These are H.R. 1 in the House and S. 1 in the Senate. By carrying the "number 1" designation, they are intended to show symbolically what the top legislative priority is for the leadership in the two chambers. This blogger may be wrong, but from the boasting that has been going on by Boehner, H.R. 1 should be a bill to repeal President Obama's health care reform law. The GOP leadership has set January 12 for the vote on repeal. In the Senate, the top priority S. 1 should be immigration reform. Both are carryover commitments from the previous Congress. Now for a bit of recap.

Despite the "shellacking" the Democrats took in last November's congressional elections, it was a successful legislative performance by Obama and his Democratic congressional backers. His pre-election victories in getting passage of an $800 billion economic stimulus package, health care reform, and greater regulation of the financial markets came only after bitter partisan battles that were only won when two or three GOP Senators backed him. In the post-election period he enjoyed remarkable and unexpected success with bipartisan support for a tax bill that Democratic liberals opposed because it was too generous to the wealthy, but also included some new stimulus elements. That was the easy part. The more difficult and generally unexpected wins came with bipartisan support for repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell on gay service in the military, ratification of the START nuclear reduction treaty with Russia, and a health care package for first responders to the 9/11 terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center.

The most notable post-election failure for the Democrats was the inability to attract Senate Republican support for the DREAM act to aid young, undocumented immigrant residents to gain citizenship. But of all Obama's wins, the most detested by the GOP and fellow traveling Tea Partiers was health care reform and thus repeal is on the top of the Republican agenda, at least in the House. And for Senate Democrats, the failure to get either a comprehensive immigration reform proposal or the more modest DREAM act passed should make immigration reform their top priority, The problem for both Republicans and Democrats is that neither priority is likely to make it through the legislative labyrinth, at least in the form they wish.

The GOP controlled House will resoundingly pass the health care repeal but it will languish in the Democratic controlled Senate, despite Boehner's chest thumping about the good prospects for also making it through the Senate. Any House efforts to cut off funding to implement health care reform will also face difficulty in the Senate as well as the prospects of a presidential veto of such a cutoff. Conversely, immigration reform will continue to face difficulties in gaining the needed bipartisan support in the Senate and has little or no future in the House unless reform is watered down and subordinated to new commitments for added border protection.

Add to this the contentious carryover agenda on the issues of providing funds to keep the government going and raising the debt ceiling by spring to avoid a disastrous government default. With Congress failing to pass any appropriation bills for the fiscal year that began last October 1, the government has been living off of short-term continuing funding resolutions with the latest running out soon. This opens the door to Republicans to seek to tie further spending to budget cuts. The GOP House leadership has talked about cutting $100 billion from government spending but has not said what they would cut. The coming argument over continued funding should force the House GOP leadership hand on whose ox is to be gored. And, of course, there remain the Senate and veto obstacles.

Then there is the debt ceiling issue. The current debt limit is $14.3 trillion which is expected to be reached in 2-3 months. If the ceiling isn't raised, you can expect an international financial disaster if the U.S. defaults on its obligations. Despite some Republican and new Tea-Party-member bluster about not raising the debt ceiling, the more responsible legislators from both parties will raise the ceiling to avoid such a default.

In sum, it's a new Congress but the old issues will set the agenda. There is, however, a very important new context -- the elections of 2012. While the public may be paying attention to what comes out of Washington over the next 22 months, Congress itself, and the President, will be focused on setting the stage to their own political advantage. Politics will trump performance. Again, an old story.