2023 is now half over. 

There wasn’t a lot Congress absolutely had to accomplish legislatively this year.

And overall, the floor traffic will likely be light until fall.

There are really only about five things which Congress must do this year.

With the pages halfway off the calendar, lawmakers have taken care of two of the five.

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Here’s the docket: Elect a House speaker. Tackle the debt ceiling. Pass a farm bill. Reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration. And finally, fund the government in September to avert a government shutdown.

Of course, there are other sundry tasks which lawmakers from both parties want to do. There are even a few other miscellaneous items which likely fall into the "must do" category" – depending on with whom you speak.

And sure. There are big hearings which both sides plan to hold. House Republicans on the Judiciary and Oversight Committees are investigating President Biden. There are multiple closed-door depositions. Former Special Counsel John Durham testified recently about how the FBI launched a probe into former President Trump and possible ties with Russia. 

The House may yet attempt to impeach Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The Senate has a host of nominees to confirm, including Labor Secretary pick Julie Su. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is trying to build consensus on legislation for artificial intelligence.

But the five-item legislative agenda is pretty much the bare minimum.

This is not the year for gigantic, legislative achievements.

Back in January, the House burned 15 rounds of voting spread over five days before electing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. It was the longest speaker’s race since 1859.

The most daunting challenge of all came next: suspending the debt ceiling to avoid a possible federal default.

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Addressing the debt limit was a more challenging lift. McCarthy had to cobble together a GOP-centric debt ceiling bill first and advance that through the House. That alone required a yeoman’s lift. But that plan would never become law, staring at Biden and a Democratically-controlled Senate. After an intense sprint of several weeks in May and tearing through the Memorial Day holiday, the House and Senate finally avoided financial calamity, lifting the debt ceiling.

Now we’re on to the remainders: government funding, the farm bill and FAA reauthorization.

The financial world features an economic phenomenon called "triple witching" which unfolds four times a year. It’s the simultaneous expiration of stock index futures, stock options and stock index option contracts on the same trading Friday. The confluence sometimes spikes trading volume and fuels volatility in the markets.

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Congress has its own version of "triple witching," too.

The farm bill, FAA reauthorization and the current government funding measure all expire on the same date: Sept. 30.

So, a collision looms.

It’s often the case that Congress will craft some sort of interim spending bill in September and tack on temporary renewals for other expiring issues like farm policy programs and the FAA. That could happen again this year. But all three plans pose their own unique, independent, disparate challenges.

A battle royale awaits over efforts by the House GOP to trim emergency food aid for some Americans. That’s to say nothing of some arch-conservatives who aim to ditch farm subsidies, which they view as corporate or "agri-welfare."

The FAA bill is stalled on the congressional jetway. There’s a dispute over pilot training hours as the industry struggles to retain and train pilots as air traffic returns to pre-pandemic levels. Massive technical glitches paralyzed some air traffic around the holidays and over the winter. There were issues leading up to the Independence Day holiday. There have also been near collisions of planes on the ground and in the air. A Southwest jet came within 100 feet of a FedEx plane in Austin, Texas, a few months back. An American and Delta plane nearly collided at JFK International Airport in New York in January. The American flight crossed the same runway near the Delta plane. They were within 1,100 feet of one another.

Lawmakers have observed trouble in the airline industry for years now. It was always thought that prospective legislative fixes could emanate from the FAA bill. That too may happen. But lawmakers have some significant political chasms to close off first.

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As we’ve reported previously in this space, averting a shutdown in the fall could emerge as a more challenging lift than the debt ceiling. Some conservatives want to abandon the debt ceiling accord McCarthy forged with Biden. In fact, McCarthy may need to dismiss that pact for now just to court the ultra-right of his conference, which is disappointed in the debt ceiling package to start with. But whatever position House Republicans take likely needs to move some in order to avoid a shutdown and find some middle ground with Senate Democrats – and probably even many Senate Republicans. That’s to say nothing of Biden.

This is a fight which could linger past Sept. 30 if there is a shutdown. Moreover, the sides could fund the government in fits and starts with stopgap bills – although it’s far from clear whether McCarthy and the conservative House Freedom Caucus could abide with that option. Defense hawks from both sides of the aisle would also find interim bills to be onerous, too.

So, no one really sees that pathway yet on the remaining 60% of the "must do" legislative agenda.

Some congressional years are unadulterated sprints to the end.

We knew the spending bills would be a major issue in 1995 when Republicans took control of the House for the first time in four decades. Plus, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., offered a robust agenda and the GOP’s Contract With America.

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Democrats promised to address climate change and health care in 2009. After a year-long battle, Democrats finished one of them: ObamaCare.

House Republicans had the ambitious plan of repealing and replacing ObamaCare in 2017 and approving a tax cut measure. ObamaCare is still on the books. It took a while, but congressional Republicans finally passed the bill for the "Trump tax cuts."

Democrats approved their infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act during the last Congress.

The legislative agenda this time around isn’t nearly as ambitious.

The year is half over. But the "must do" list isn’t that long – even if it will take the rest of the year to accomplish.

Thailand's new Parliament convened Monday nearly two months after a progressive opposition party won a stunning election victory, but there was still no clear sign that its leader will be able to become prime minister and end nine years of military-dominated rule.

To form a government, a party must have the backing of a combined majority of the elected House of Representatives and the military-appointed Senate, which represents the country's traditional conservative ruling class.

The Move Forward Party's unexpected election victory alarmed the ruling establishment, which regards it as a threat to the status quo and the monarchy. Some senators have already announced their opposition to party leader Pita Limjaroenrat, a 42-year-old Harvard-educated businessman.

Pita has formed an eight-party coalition holding 312 seats in the 500-seat lower house, which leaves it short of an overall majority without the support of a significant number of the 250 senators.

The election results showed that Move Forward’s progressive agenda resonated with a public weary of nine years of military-controlled rule under Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who as army commander seized power in a 2014 coup and returned as prime minister after a 2019 general election.

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But what made Move Forward popular with many voters was what alarmed royalist conservatives. The party pledged to reform many powerful institutions, including the monarchy and the military, which retain power and influence under a constitution written during Prayuth’s administration.

While the threats from Move Forward’s ideological foes are clear, what was less expected are the tensions between it and the biggest partner in its coalition, the Pheu Thai party.

Pheu Thai and its predecessor parties have won all national elections since 2001 until this past May. It is the latest in a string of parties linked to former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a military coup in 2006.

Royalist power holders have harbored enmity toward Thaksin — a billionaire populist now in exile — for a long time. Prayuth’s 2014 coup ousted a government formed by Thaksin’s sister, Yingluck Shinawatra.

Move Forward and Pheu Thai have been squabbling over which will get the post of House speaker, which is supposed to be chosen by Parliament on Tuesday.

"The position of the House speaker is essential because he will determine the agenda of Parliament, and so therefore the degree of political transformation," said Tyrell Haberkorn, a Thai studies scholar at the University of Wisconsin.

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The two parties announced a compromise after a meeting on Monday. The coalition will nominate Wan Muhamad Noor Matha, a veteran leader of the Prachachat Party, to be House speaker, and Move Forward and Pheu Thai will each have one deputy speaker. Pita said the decision was reached to strengthen unity among the coalition's allies to support his bid to be prime minister.

Attachak Sattayanurak, a professor of history at Chiang Mai University in northern Thailand, suggested that the apparent distrust between the two parties is potentially the biggest threat to Pita's possible prime ministership.

Pheu Thai leaders, almost as a matter of pride, could not be seen as ceding too much to their Move Forward partner, he said.

"The feelings of people in the Pheu Thai party, that it used to be a heavyweight, that had won many elections and was able to be an agenda setter," drove many of them to insist that Move Forward make the speaker's post part of Pheu Thai's share of the pie, he said.

However, if Pheu Thai fails to show an unbreakable bond with Move Forward, it "reduces the power of the group that calls itself a democracy bloc" and gives the senators and their conservative allies "more grounds not to choose Pita," Attachak said.

Aside from Move Forward's problems with the Senate and Pheu Thai, there are serious fears that Pita and his party will be blocked by legal challenges, a fate that has brought down previous parties that ran afoul of the conservative establishment.

Several Thaksin-backed governments and a party that was Move Forward's predecessor were victims of rulings by the Election Commission and the National Anti-Corruption Commission, both nominally independent agencies that are often seen as favoring the ruling elite, along with the Constitutional Court.

Pita has been accused of violating a constitutional prohibition on politicians holding shares in a media company. The media company is no longer operating, and Pita says the shares are part of his father's estate and don't belong to him. The prospect that he could be banned from politics and even jailed for what is widely seen at most as a minor technical violation has triggered fears that the political instability that has wracked Thailand on and off since 2006 could return with a vengeance.