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If Republican leaders can quell conservative dissatisfaction with House Speaker John Boehner, and no further drama comes out from the House leadership's No. 3 Rep. Steve Scalise, GOP heads hope to get back on track with their aggressive agenda to forcefully confront President Barack Obama on the top issues of the day, including the Keystone XL pipeline, immigration, health care and national security. (Walsh and Barrett, 1/5)

One of the new Republican Congress’s first legislative priorities — redefining a full-time worker under the Affordable Care Act — is gaining opposition just days before passage from a surprising group: conservatives. The House will take up legislation on Wednesday, the first major bill of the 114th Congress, that would change the definition of a full-time worker under the health law from one who works 30 hours a week to one who works 40 hours. A vote is scheduled for Thursday. Writing this weekend in National Review, Yuval Levin, a conservative popular with House Republicans, said the legislation “seems likely to be worse than doing nothing.” His rationale is that there are many more people who work 40 hours a week than just over 30, and that it would be easier for an employer to cut their hours to 39 a week to avoid offering them insurance than to 29. (Weisman, 1/5)

Repealing ObamaCare’s controversial medical device tax will be a top priority for the new GOP-controlled Congress, as Republicans and industry groups look to take their biggest legislative bite yet out of the president’s signature healthcare law. (Ferris, 1/6)

Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Monday that a GOP focus on highly politicized issues like ObamaCare and immigration in 2015 would be a “disservice to the American people.” (Ferris, 1/5)

Republicans are assuming full control of Congress for the first time in eight years in a day of pomp, circumstance and raw politics beneath the Capitol Dome. (Werner, 1/6)

For Republicans, their performance in the coming months will become a referendum not only on their ability to lead — a key question in the 2016 presidential race — but on what has become the party's increasingly conservative ideology. The incoming House Budget Chairman, Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, vows to deliver a spending blueprint that builds on the austerity outlined by his predecessor, Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the former vice presidential nominee, with cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other safety-net programs. (Mascaro, 1/5)

While there is likely to be no shortage of “flash points” between the parties regarding health care in the new Congress, the House Republican who will oversee much of the federal medical discretionary spending has a strategy for finding consensus on significant policy changes could be achieved through spending bills. "If you have enough hearings, people find areas where surprisingly they agree, and they have a chance to appreciate one another and develop relationships,” said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla., who will become chairman of the Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Appropriations panel in the 114th Congress. “If you want to work past the talking points and the friction points, you have to have enough meetings and enough dialogue to find some areas of common thought.” (Young, 1/5)

The Republicans are taking over the U.S. Senate again, and just as in 1981, 1995 and 2003, [Sen. Orrin Hatch] from Utah will have a central role, this time as chairman of the Finance Committee that controls tax, trade and health policy. Hatch will start the year by trying to expedite free-trade deals and repeal a tax on medical devices, while working on the long-term project of revising the U.S. tax code. (Rubin, 1/6)