Yet, there are few must-pass bills on the agenda except for a measure to keep the government open past the Sept. 30 funding deadline. Johnson is expected to pass a short-term funding bill keeping the government open until early December with Democratic votes this week. Although that bill is likely to pass, conservative hard-liners are upset over the speaking using Democratic votes and other policy disagreements.

The prospect that hard-liners could paralyze the floor in retribution and also a desire by vulnerable Republicans to head home and campaign as polls show an increasingly difficult midterm environment, has some speculating there is no reason for the House to remain in session until after Election Day.

“We don’t have anything to do, so let’s get home, let’s go home and answer the public,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) said. “I do more work when I’m at home than when I’m up here. As a limited government person, if we’re not going to be doing anything up here, all we can do is cause harm.”

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) echoed the sentiment, telling the Washington Examiner that if there was little prospect for major legislation passing, lawmakers should go home and work their districts.

“I think it’s a play on basically getting done what we can do, avoiding controversy, focusing on the main deals, things the American people want to hear about,” McCormick said.

But other Republicans warned that heading home would mean abandoning an extensive list of unfinished business. On that list are the Farm Bill, the National Defense Authorization Act, the annual appropriations bills, and potentially another party-line spending bill. Each of the measures has advanced in either the House or the Senate, but has made little progress in getting to President Donald Trump’s desk.

“I’m here to work, I don’t know what they’re gonna to do,” said Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-TN). “If we’re going to do another reconciliation, we need to get it done.”

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner he did not know if this scheduling change would come to fruition, but that he hoped to stay in session because there is “a lot of work left to get done.”

Cloud pointed to the GOP’s major voter ID bill, known as the SAVE America Act, and reconciliation as outstanding items he wanted to see done. The reconciliation bill was initially floated to include several major election-year provisions that could boost Republicans. Like the SAVE Act, reconciliation has stalled in the Senate.

“The issue we’re having in the House is a lot of the work we are doing is getting stalled in the Senate, so you know I would like to see some bills move in the Senate,” Cloud said.

House GOP leaders have not indicated that Johnson has made a decision. Keeping lawmakers in Washington could allow Republicans to pressure the Senate to act, but it carries its own risk: Internal divisions could grind the House floor to a halt and hand Democrats a made-for-campaign-season spectacle of Republicans struggling to govern.

Even though the schedule remains in flux, Democrats are using the prospect of canceled votes to make their case for why voters should elect them this November.

“It’s embarrassing for them, genuinely, and what they’re putting on the floor this week, it’s so unserious, none of it suggests they’re serious about the things that are facing most of the folks in my district,” Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) told the Washington Examiner.

Landsman added that apart from funding the government, the only other major bill House Republicans were eyeing this week was a resolution denouncing socialism.

“The country has become so expensive and the bills they’re putting on the floor and the fact that they are just going to go home for the rest of the election cycle suggest they’re not interested in or they don’t have any sense on how to fix this. It’s incredibly frustrating,” Landsman continued.

Other Democrats suggested that the idea of canceling votes for the rest of September was proof of the dire political straits the GOP is facing.

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“The Republicans are obviously scrambling to catch up with their constituents for leaving them in the dust,” House Judiciary Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told the Washington Examiner.

“They’re basically running on a platform of a disastrous war, disastrous tariffs, and disastrous inflation, so they’ve got no program, so I think they want to go back home to see as many people as possible,” he continued. “It’s a dubious strategy.”