The same day as the Medicare vote, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee unanimously approved legislation empowering Congress to review and possibly reject an emerging Iran nuclear pact. Lawmakers seem to be close to a compromise on a human trafficking bill that has bogged down on a dispute over abortion, and Republican leaders had decided to put off the Lynch vote until the trafficking measure was resolved — a linkage Democrats decried. The new Congress got off to an ugly start when lawmakers came perilously close to partially shutting down the Department of Homeland Security because of Republican objections to Obama's executive actions limiting deportations for millions of immigrants in the U.S.