When the next Congress cranks up in January, there will be more women, many new faces and 11 fewer tea party-backed House Republicans from the class of 2010 who sought a second term.

Republicans drove toward renewed control of the House on Tuesday as Democrats failed to make any significant inroads into the GOP's delegations from the East, South and Midwest.

A barrage of negative ads, more than $2 billion in spending and endless campaign stops all come down to this: Americans likely will elect a Congress as divided as the one they've been ranting about for two years.

The party that runs the Senate next year may be decided by how well President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney do in toss-up states like Nevada, Ohio, Virginia and Wisconsin, where ballots feature parallel Senate races about as tight as the presidential contest.

A new recession is likely if a stalemate over tax and spending cuts continues between Democrats and Republicans, according to fresh, dire projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Senate leaders moved toward a showdown Wednesday with votes on rival Democratic and Republican plans for extending broad tax cuts that will otherwise expire in January.

The highest earning Americans would pay a top rate of 23.8 percent for capital gains and dividends next year under a $272 billion, one-year extension of tax cuts that Senate Democrats are circulating among themselves.

Democrats blocked a Senate vote Wednesday on President Barack Obama's plan to extend expiring tax cuts for a year for everyone but the highest-earning Americans, as the two parties maneuvered to try embarrassing each other on one of the election year's foremost issues.