WASHINGTON — Congress is expected back in session today for the final legislative push of the year, and already the punches were flying this morning between President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid even before the gavels banged open the chambers.

Bush scolded Congress for its “unfinished business” at a morning Rose Garden press conference. The president pressed for congressional action on his war funds request, which Democrats have said they will not provide unless Bush agrees to start bringing troops home.

It’s been interesting to watch how a president who seemed increasingly sidelined as a lame duck earlier this year after the Democrats’ rise to power is now emboldened to assert his initiatives to Congress.

Reid is not one to cede the upper hand in the legislative-executive showdown. He is gathering the press for his own early afternoon briefing to discuss Democrats’ plans to change the course in Iraq – something Democrats have been unable to do all year.

Reid issued a preview of what was to come shortly after Bush’s remarks: “President Bush fails to grasp that the way to get things done for the American people is by sitting down to negotiate our differences, not by posturing from the Rose Garden. We could have already given our troops what they need in Iraq and funded our critical needs at home if not for the stubborn refusal of President Bush and his Republican enablers to work with us.”