By Richard E. Cohen, CQ Staff

The House is offering a July agenda that Republican leaders hope will demonstrate that legislative work has not yet ground to a pre-election halt, although the first significant item on the schedule is a “message” bill with no chance of enactment.

The work period begins in earnest July 11 with another vote on repealing the 2010 health care law, a proposition doomed in the Senate.

Next up is a bill (HR 4402) to speed development of strategic and critical minerals by limiting the duration of reviews of drilling permits and requiring concurrent, rather than sequential, consideration. While that measure has some Democratic support, environmental groups oppose it.

Appropriations legislation is on tap next week, when debate is expected on some of the six fiscal 2013 spending bills the House has yet to consider. The GOP’s priority is the Defense appropriations bill (HR 5856), with action on the Financial Services spending bill (HR 6020) expected to follow.

The House also will take up a bill from Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith, R-Texas, that would offer additional green cards to foreign graduates of American universities in high-tech fields.

With the exception of the health care law repeal, most of the initial bills awaiting House action are unlikely to become front-burner campaign issues. In some cases, Republican leaders are intent on tamping down efforts to transform them into partisan conflicts.

The leadership made it clear months ago that it hoped to wrap up most necessary legislation by the end of June and use the remaining time in session before the elections to focus on bills that draw contrasts with the Democratic Senate and the Obama administration.

Republican legislative strategists have discussed dedicating to a broad policy theme each of the coming four weeks leading to the August recess. In a May 25 memorandum laying out the House’s “summer legislative agenda,” Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the House will spend the month on efforts to spur economic growth, including a bill aimed at “cutting government red tape” and averting “the largest tax increase in American history [scheduled] to go into effect on Jan. 1.”

House action on some measures — such as Republican legislation to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts (PL 107-16, PL 108-27) — could help shape how lawmakers handle fiscal issues in a post-election session or at the start of the 113th Congress in January.

Congress’ completion last month of a surface transportation reauthorization (HR 4843) packaged with an extension of student loan interest rates and a renewal of flood insurance has freed House leaders to move beyond deadlines. President Obama signed the measure into law July 6.

With few, if any, of the 12 annual spending bills likely to be enacted before the end of the fiscal year, Republicans will need to decide whether they are satisfied with a continuing resolution that would keep the government running at the $1.047 trillion level set in the Budget Control Act (PL 112-25) or whether they want to press a more politically risky — and likely unsuccessful — bid to cut spending levels.

Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer, D-Md., called on GOP leaders last month to stick with past precedent and allow a “simple, straightforward” funding measure for the next fiscal year that does little more than extend the date on current appropriations law.

Another fiscal measure that has attracted some Democratic support is a bill (HR 5872) that would require the administration to detail for lawmakers the likely impact of the budget law’s across-the-board automatic spending cuts, which are scheduled to take effect in January. The House Budget Committee approved the measure June 27 in a 30-0 vote. The Senate adopted a similar amendment to its version of the farm bill (S 3240).