This year, though, as lawmakers gather for the three-month session that convenes Wednesday, a cloud -and perhaps even some rain - is hovering on the fiscal horizon.

Toward the end of November, just outside the Capitol, various lawmakers from New York gather around a lectern to bemoan their lot.

About a dozen lawmakers from Bharatiya Janata and its allies noisily gathered outside Parliament chanting: "Sonia, go back.

Mr. Quayle and Mr. Sununu took the campaign to Park City, Utah, over the weekend, where some Republican lawmakers gathered for a charity event.

As lawmakers gathered today, dressed in conservative sports shirts and slacks instead of their usual suits and ties and dresses, they showed signs of irritability and exhaustion.

When Palestinian lawmakers gathered in Ramallah to address the crisis, they, too, opted for an indirect approach.

Instead of taking up the measure, lawmakers gathered in heated meetings around the Capitol trying to resolve their differences on for what many of them is the most important legislation of the year.

Some lawmakers gathered Monday in Gaza City and others in Ramallah, on the West Bank, and the sessions were linked by video conferencing.

Some of their meetings, on March 26, 27 and 28, will be held in Federal Hall, where the first lawmakers gathered in 1789.

Some are full time, as in California and New York, while lawmakers gather for just a few weeks or months in sessions in New Hampshire and Wyoming.