Washington ? The election-year session of Congress picks up this week where the last one left off: Senate Republicans still are trying to break a Democratic filibuster, and the two sides agree on little beyond the extent to which partisanship has made lawmaking difficult.

Legislators will have to put aside their differences long enough to deal with several inescapable issues when the second session of the 108th Congress opens Tuesday.

They include a highway spending bill that could create hundreds of thousands of jobs, pension plan relief for financially struggling companies and corporate tax changes needed to stave off billions of dollars in penalties from the European Union.

Expectations are typically low for an election year; some issues may be too hot to handle.

Prospects are not good for Congress responding to Bush’s immigrant worker proposal. The conservative drive for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages is unlikely to make much headway.

Senate Democrats are also likely to harden their resistance to the president’s more conservative judicial nominees after Bush’s recess appointment of Mississippi federal judge Charles Pickering to an appeals court. Democrats had blocked the appointment for two years, questioning Pickering’s civil rights record.

Robert Schmuhl, professor of American studies at Notre Dame, predicted this session of Congress “will be as politically driven, and controlled, as any in recent memory.” Virtually nothing that is not to the advantage of the Republican majority will make it through, he said.