Congress has just a few weeks to avert a government shutdown and prevent the expiration of dozens of tax breaks important to businesses. So what has the House been up to this week? Stripping Social Security benefits from a handful of former Nazis and stopping Medicare from paying for penis pumps.

In the often frenetic final weeks of a congressional session, lawmakers are dispensing with the easy while dawdling on the difficult. After working in Washington for just a few weeks since the summer, they are scheduled to leave again for the holidays on December 11, the day that funding for most of the federal government expires. House Republican leaders are trying to persuade their members, and some Democrats, to support legislation that would fund all but one of the 12 federal departments through September. As a protest of President Obama's immigration action, the Department of Homeland Security would receive money only through March.

Meanwhile, the House on Tuesday evening approved a bunch of bills subject to much less controversy. The most notable among them was the No Social Security for Nazis Act, a rapid response measure—especially for Congress—to a report that suspected war criminals forced out of the U.S. had received, and in a few cases are continuing to receive, federal entitlement checks. The bill passed unanimously, 420-0, and seems likely to sail through the Senate as well. Even though the measure will probably only affect a few ex-Nazis still living in Europe, it may amount to the most significant cut in years to an entitlement program infamously referred to as "the third rail" of American politics.