For the lame-duck session, add another bill to the Senate agenda that is very likely to consume valuable floor time: legislation extending provisions of a 2008 surveillance law that are set to expire at the end of the year.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has placed the bill (S 3276) on hold, meaning that the measure’s backers will probably have to go through a cumbersome floor process to overcome that hold unless they can persuade him to stop blocking the legislation.

But, aides said, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) wants to move the bill. Intelligence officials in the Obama administration have deemed the extension measure their top legislative priority. The expiring provisions allow the federal government to conduct surveillance of foreign targets without individual court orders, even if those targets are communicating with people in the United States.

“We expect in the lame duck to complete the” extension, said an aide to the Intelligence Committee, which in June approved the bill, sponsored by Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). “It needs to be done by the end of the year. The leader’s office knows this is must-pass legislation in the lame duck and that it may require some floor time. We’re arranging the details of how we’ll get it.”

A leadership aide added that “this is something we will almost certainly deal with during the lame duck.”