Should congress refrain from business during the lame-duck-session?

[The Mikado]

The 20th Amendment wasn't aggressive enough in cutting back the lame duck, yes, but it's just worth pointing out that you're abutting against Christmas-New Years pretty hard and Congress would be gone anyway. I don't really have an issue with the new Congress showing up on Jan 3rd because it's just after the New Year so they don't show up and immediately leave session for the holidays. It'd probably be better if the new President started Jan 10th rather than Jan 20th, though.

People always say "when this system was invented people were still traveling in horse-drawn carriages etc" but no they weren't, these rules were written in 1933 by the 20th Amendment, and they were explicitly trying to fix the lame duck problem by moving Inauguration Day from March 4th to January 20th. It's just January 20th is still too late.

[The Mikado]

Wouldn't it make more sense to do what normal countries do and... not have a lame-duck session at all? Swear the new Congress in immediately on its election and set it to work.

As Nathan gets at, America does what its comparable peer set of countries do: the other New World Presidential Democracies. Mexico has a lame duck, Peru does, Brazil does, etc.