Last week Congress did something it had not done in more than forty years—it held a roll call vote during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, when it is usually not in session. Senators, who voted on Thursday, were not happy about having their holiday vacations cut short, with Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) complaining that, “I didn’t realize how much I didn’t want to be here until I got here.”

Congress is back in session at the request of President Barack Obama, who has implored both Houses to pass legislation to avoid the so-called “fiscal cliff” and prevent automatic tax increases on the middle class from taking effect on January 1.

The session is a lame duck session, an oddity of the American political system in which members who know they will not be back—often because they were not reelected—are nevertheless allowed to vote and make policy. Lame duck sessions are possible between a November general election and January 3 of the following year, when the new Congress is seated. This year, there will be 85 lame ducks waddling around Congress until January 3, including 30 Republicans and 18 Democrats who suffered electoral defeats last year.

The last time Congress voted this time of year was in 1970, at the end of the second session of the 91st Congress, during a contentious fight over the federal budget and a filibuster over federal financing for the development of an American supersonic transport airplane to compete with the European-made Concorde. Congress passed several bills, including the Clean Air Act, but President Richard Nixon vetoed four of them. The post-Christmas holiday lame duck session before that was in 1950, during the Korean War, when Congress approved supplemental spending for defense and atomic energy.

-Matt Bewig

To Learn More:

Summoned Back to Work, Senators Chafe at Inaction (by Jennifer Steinhauer, New York Times)

Lame-Duck History, Part 1: 1940-1970 (by Arthur Lieber, Occasional Planet)

Lame Duck Sessions of Congress, 1935-2010 (by Richard S. Beth and Jessica Tollestrup, Congressional Research Service) (pdf)