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Democrats are hinging their hopes of fulfilling Joe Biden's health care agenda on runoff elections in Georgia, where voters are expected to decide next month if they want to send two Democrats to the Senate and give the party unified control of the government. It's an uphill climb, as Democrats in both races will be seen as slight underdogs in the race, though the party’s hopes have been lifted by what they believe will be a win in the state for Biden's presidential campaign. (Hellmann, 11/8)

Lawmakers return to Washington on Monday for Congress’s lame-duck session confronting a number of major problems but lacking clear signals from President Trump — even as President-elect Joe Biden and his team are poised to begin engaging with congressional Democrats on their priorities. Congress faces a government shutdown deadline and crucial economic relief negotiations at a moment of extraordinary national uncertainty, with Trump refusing to concede the presidential election and with coronavirus cases spiking nationwide. (Werner, Kane and Abutaleb, 11/8)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of President-elect Joe Biden, said on Sunday that President Trump could “show some graciousness” by backing another coronavirus relief package between now and the end of his term. “One way that President Trump can show some graciousness in the next 73 days during the transition is to publicly support a significant pandemic relief bill,” Coons said on ABC’s “This Week.” “We’ve had record new cases all this past week, it’s past time for us to come together and deliver the relief the American people are waiting for. (Budryk, 11/8)

Former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg told Fox News on Sunday that President-elect Joe Biden faces an adversarial Senate should it remain Republican-controlled. “Mitch McConnell's gonna have a decision to make,” Buttigieg told host Chris Wallace. “Is his purpose in Washington to defy the American people who along with the president and the House of Representatives will believe in expanding, not taking away, health care, ensuring that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes instead of slashing their taxes no matter what, raising wages, treating climate change as real?” (Choi, 11/8)

For President-elect Joe Biden, creating a public option to compete with private health insurance may be no easier to pass than it was a decade ago. His promise to lower Medicare’s eligibility age and advance a robust public option to compete with private health insurance was seen as an olive branch to progressives agitating for a total government overhaul like “Medicare for All.” But Biden’s more incremental approach still will face opposition from Republicans and powerful health care lobbies, which have spent the past two years preparing a furious assault against further expansion of government coverage if a Democrat took back the White House. (Luthi, 11/7)