“I think right now everybody is focused on Nov. 8," Sen. John Thune says. | AP Photo Congress eyes the exit doors

Lawmakers rolled into the Capitol earlier this month bracing for one last round of fireworks before sprinting out of town until after the election.

But as Congress prepares to wrap up as early as this week leaving the Capitol dark until November, lawmakers are exiting more with a whimper than a bang.


The reason? Everybody’s got Election Day on the brain.

“I’m glad there wasn’t [drama],” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said in an interview. “I think right now everybody is focused on Nov. 8 and any consequential legislative action probably doesn’t take place until after that.”

That warning of a government shutdown Harry Reid delivered heading into the session? Not happening.

“I think the Senate probably [finishes] by the middle of the week and us maybe by the end, maybe spill over into the week after,” said a relaxed Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a senior member on the House Appropriations Committee, when asked to predict how they wrap up.

The Senate has teed up a key procedural vote Monday on a stopgap bill to fund government agencies until mid-December, after staffers worked over the weekend to put the finishing touches on a proposal that would satisfy both sides.

Most of the wrangling — over Planned Parenthood language related to Zika funding, disaster relief for flooded Louisiana and internet domain oversight — has unfolded behind the scenes. The Senate has taken the lead, a move some considered necessary after House conservatives threatened to withhold support for a bill that didn’t go into next year.

“I’d rather it start [the process in the House], but I think the speaker had enough of a challenge to go from six months to three months and considers that, I think, his contribution to the cause,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “When you’re writing a bill in one house, then that house dominates the framework.”

The funding détente is considered a loss for House GOP hard-liners, who were initially pushing for a bill that funded government agencies into early next year, which would have forced a new Congress to relitigate the issue with a new president.

But even House conservatives seem resigned to a continuing resolution (CR) that ends in December, even if they don’t like it.

“For people who think that a short-term CR is better than a long-term CR, it just doesn’t make much sense to me,” said Rep. Bill Flores (R-Texas), chairman of the conservative Republican Study Committee.

But, “because Senate Republicans have caved, really the only likely path forward is a short-term CR,” he added.

One unrelated issue could still produce some 11th-hour drama. Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kansas) has threatened to force a vote to impeach the IRS commissioner this week, even after House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) reached a last-minute deal to postpone the vote until after the election.

Under the terms of the handshake agreement, IRS Commissioner John Koskinen will testify before the Judiciary Committee Wednesday under oath, giving Jordan and other Freedom Caucus members the hearing they’d been demanding for months.

Still, Koskinen’s lawyers sent a letter to Goodlatte Friday warning that the hearing wasn’t an official impeachment proceeding and shouldn’t be treated as such.

“Testimony under oath from a single witness — before he has even been allowed to see any evidence against him and with no right to present corroborating evidence to address false or mistaken allegations — is no substitute,” Koskinen’s lawyers wrote.

It remains to be seen what Huelskamp will do. His spokesman Jon Meadows did not return multiple requests from POLITICO seeking clarification on the congressman’s plans.

The House Freedom Caucus hasn’t voted to officially support the deal to push a floor vote on Koskinen until after the election, but insiders expect the group’s members to get behind it. That has Republicans on the other side of the Capitol breathing a sigh of relief.

“I know there are a lot of people who feel passionately over [in the House] about that vote but I’m not sure, at this point, what that accomplishes,” Thune said. “I just think that was some drama that probably wasn’t necessary right now.”