John Boehner

Presided over by Vice President Joe Biden, the Senate passed an immigration reform bill Thursday that would allow undocumented workers a path to gain U.S. citizenship. The bill was drafted by a bipartisan team of Senators, but expectations are low that it will survive a vote in the House of Representatives.

Republican and Democrat senators introduced a bipartisan plan on Monday for immigration reform. The legislation, they say, will create a path to citizenship for the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, sanction employers who hire undocumented workers and increase border security.

The 113th Congress opened for business on Thursday and they’re already embroiled in a controversy. House leaders, in the fact of fierce criticism, reversed course and said they’d schedule a vote for Friday on the first installment of relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy.

Congress approved a fiscal cliff bill Tuesday night, after weeks of broken deals and failed compromises. But the battle is far from over as conservatives push for dramatic increases in spending cuts in exchange for raising the country’s debt limit, as soon as March.

In another attempt to strike a deal and avoid a fiscal cliff, House Speaker John Boehner introduced a plan extending the Bush-era tax cuts for Americans earning less than $1 million. But the plan failed and now the clock is ticking to strike a new deal.