The Week: “A new Congress means a new distribution of offices on Capitol Hill — and it’s going to cost us. Some 60 freshmen senators and representatives have selected office space via a lottery system much like what some colleges use to assign dorm space to upperclassmen. Meanwhile, returning members of Congress jockey to move into better office space closer to meeting rooms and the House or Senate floor. The last time these moves were made, in late 2012, the moving bill totaled $1.5 million.”

Gallup: “Americans’ job approval rating for Congress averaged 15% in 2014, close to the record-low yearly average of 14% found last year. The highest yearly average was measured in 2001, at 56%. Yearly averages haven’t exceeded 20% in the past five years, as well as in six of the past seven years.”

“The wrangling between the White House and Congress over a $1.1 trillion spending bill is the first test of how political forces unleashed by the midterm elections and impending 2016 campaigns will influence governing here,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

“The fight foreshadows two years of legislative battles defined by tensions not just between the two parties—as has been the case since the Republican takeover of the House in 2010—but within them… The open question is whether the newly energized ideological wings of each party will become an impediment to legislation—or whether they will be bypassed by lawmakers more open to compromise. That appeared to have happened Thursday, when 57 House Democrats joined 162 Republicans to form a fragile coalition to pass the spending bill.”