MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Congress is heading home for recess, swapping the halls of the Capitol for the campaign trail. Lawmakers won't return until after the election, and what they do then will depend on who wins what jobs. NPR congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt is with us now to tell us more about this. Good morning, Barbara.
BARBARA SPRUNT, BYLINE: Good morning.
MARTIN: So right now, House Speaker Mike Johnson has a one-seat majority in the House. What has he been saying about how he thinks about his party's chances come November?
SPRUNT: Well, Speaker Johnson has said he predicts the House Republican majority will grow, and he told us earlier this week that he wants to remain speaker if the GOP does hold the House.
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MIKE JOHNSON: I think continuity is going to be very important. I mean, we're laying out a very aggressive agenda for the first hundred days. I believe we'll have unified government, and so there will be a lot of responsibility upon us. So we don't put the cart before the horse, but we have to be prepared to lead - and we will. And I intend to lead this group into the next Congress.
SPRUNT: Now, if Republicans do keep control of the House, Johnson will have a bit of a tightrope to walk, which is familiar to him. He's been doing it essentially his whole tenure as speaker. He'll have to negotiate another funding deal, and he'll have to work to not alienate the members that he'll need in order to keep that speaker's gavel.
MARTIN: OK. So Johnson is talking about Republicans keeping control of the House. The Senate is also in play, as they say. So how are the races in each chamber shaping up?
SPRUNT: Republicans need to flip two seats in the Senate to win it outright. Or they could win one seat and the White House, and then a Republican vice president would be able to cast a tie-breaking vote. Recent projections do tilt towards Republicans taking the Senate. In the House, Democrats need a net gain of four seats to take control. There's about two dozen toss-up seats at play. And for all the conversations about politics and math, this is also about policy because whoever the next president is will need a friendly Congress to implement his or her agenda.
MARTIN: OK. So once Congress does come back on the other side of all this, what's on its plate?
SPRUNT: They'll have about five weeks after the elections to get a deal on fiscal 2025 spending before the new Dec. 20 deadline. Speaker Johnson has already said that he doesn't support a huge catchall bill to fund the government - called an omnibus - so another stopgap bill may be in our future. And there's other issues for Congress to tackle as well. There's the farm bill, disaster aid, potential measures to help Ukraine, the National Defense Authorization Act, funding for the bridge in Baltimore that collapsed months ago. It's a long list.
MARTIN: OK. But if they know that these are all things that they have to do, what is the point of punting all of that until after the election?
SPRUNT: Well, congressional leaders figured, why make these decisions on all of these issues now when lawmakers have to campaign? And depending on what happens in November, one party or the other could have a stronger hand to negotiate. Johnson, in particular, is hoping to come back to Congress to deal with all of those issues with potentially unified government if Republicans hold the House, win the Senate and Donald Trump wins the White House. So for all the talk about how the country may be run next year, the results of the elections will shape what happens a lot sooner.
MARTIN: That is NPR congressional reporter Barbara Sprunt. Barbara, thank you.
SPRUNT: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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