

The 114th Session of Congress will convene Jan. 6. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday released the 2015 congressional calendar, which sets up the weekly voting agenda for the 114th Congress.

The new session of Congress will convene Jan. 6. And that four-day week sets the pace for the rest of the year: By my count, the calendar has no five-day voting weeks and 18 weeks in which zero voting days are scheduled. (That comes to 132 voting days on the 2015 calendar.) January appears to be the only full month in which Congress will be in session.

Lawmakers typically use the time off to head back to their home districts.

“Overall, when organizing this year’s legislative calendar, we sought continued certainty for Members and their staffs, while facilitating the most efficient, productive Congress possible for the people we represent,” McCarthy wrote in an e-mailed statement.

Per convention, the House will be on recess for the entire month of August. The August recess this year begins July 31. Lawmakers are scheduled to be back on the Hill on Sept. 8. There are also no votes scheduled for the week leading to the 4th of July, which this year falls on a Saturday.

The 114th Congress will have to grapple with a growing list of contentious issues dividing voters, including immigration reform, the Keystone XL pipeline, health-care reform, surveillance program reform and various national security concerns. But action on those issues is threatened by divided government.

"It is imperative that the House use its voting days in 2015 to work in a bipartisan way toward achieving progress on the major challenges we face," Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer said in a statement.

All 132 of them.