The House will almost certainly be in session all next week and the week of Dec. 13 before adjourning for the year, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Wednesday.

“I think we’ll be in next week,” the Maryland Democrat said. “I was hopeful that that would not be the case. … I was hopeful that we would be able to have our Members off.”

Hoyer said he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid want to adjourn the 111th Congress by Dec. 18 — the day the latest short-term government funding resolution expires — if not earlier that week.

House leaders had wanted to break for next week while the Senate completed work on tax cut extensions and a longer-term government funding bill, in part to spare the high number of defeated Members who have already been moved out of their offices the trouble of toiling in makeshift work spaces.

“We have 82 Members who do not have an office,” Hoyer said, noting that those Members are operating out of cubicles in the basement of the Rayburn House Office Building. “That’s a terrible situation to have Members in, and I don’t like it and was hopeful we could have them off — all of us off.”

But Hoyer said it now looked as though the House would have to be in session next week to complete its work for the year.