Back to work on Monday, Congress faces a hefty list of unfinished business and a politically driven agenda in an election year that will determine control of the House and Senate.
A popular mass transit tax break, which saves the typical New Jersey commuter hundreds of dollars a year, will be cut in half at the beginning of the New Year, unless Congress acts quickly to renew it.
Following the latest fiasco in Washington, some have suggested that limiting the number of terms U.S. Senators and Representatives can serve might help them work together.
The shutdown in Washington is over, but the vast majority of Garden State residents are still furious that Congress let the federal government close for more than two weeks.
There's a lot of mutual fingerpointing in Washington behind this week's federal government shutdown, but the two sides also worry about long-term political fallout from this.
Congress plunged the nation into a partial government shutdown Tuesday as a long-running dispute over President Barack Obama's health care law stalled a temporary funding bill, forcing about 800,000 federal workers off the job and suspending most non-essential federal programs and services.