Lawmaking lows? Congress heads into lame duck with slow pace

WASHINGTON — Unless the upcoming lame-duck session is remarkably productive, the current Congress may be a relative bust. It’s on track to produce fewer laws than the previous Congress, a Roll Call analysis shows.

So far in the 118th Congress, 106 public laws totaling 2,705 legislative pages have been enacted, according to the Office of the Federal Register. At this point in the 117th, the running tally was 214 laws totaling 4,702 pages.

Congressional output, as measured by the sheer number of bills passed, has trended downward across the decades, according to data tracked by the Brookings Institution. The average dropped from around 828 bills per two-year meeting in the 1950s to less than half that, merely 355, across the last five full Congresses. But if you consider how bills have grown longer, and look instead at the total number of statutory pages enacted, Congress has been going gangbusters in recent years — that is, until the 118th.

The productivity drop-off can’t be blamed on a lack of proposals. In the House alone, for example, members have introduced more than 10,000 bills for the first time since the Carter administration (excluding resolutions and joint resolutions).

It’s not quite fair to judge the 118th against previous Congresses just yet, as it will return after the election for what promises to be an action-packed lame-duck session, with things like disaster relief and a farm bill renewal twisting in the wind. But even if you make some generous assumptions for the rest of the year, this Congress seems poised to earn the “do little” title that so many Americans assign it.

Must-pass bills could add another couple of thousand pages or more, between the annual spending bills and the National Defense Authorization Act. That said, there’s no guarantee lawmakers will pass a full spending package this year; they could enact another continuing resolution, effectively maintaining most funding levels and punting on making any significant changes until the next Congress.

The last lame duck in 2022 saw 148 items signed into law, which totaled just over 4,000 pages of legislative text. Most of the text came from just two bills, the NDAA (1,772 pages) and the annual appropriations package (1,653 pages), while another 40 bills renamed post offices. It’s anyone’s guess how many noncontroversial proposals and gold coin issuances current members might get to in the upcoming lame duck beyond the big-ticket items.

Those caveats notwithstanding, even if this Congress matches or exceeds that post-election productivity, putting its output somewhere around 260 laws and upward of 6,700 pages, it will be tough to catch up to recent totals. The 117th Congress enacted 8,742 pages across 362 laws, the 116th saw 8,432 pages across 344 laws and the 115th pushed 7,872 pages across 442 laws. Current members could even compete for the distinction of passing the fewest laws in living memory, rivaling the low point of 283 in the 112th Congress of 2011–12, according to the post-WWII data tracked by Brookings.

A House divided cannot stand?

The 118th got off to a historically slow start, passing just 34 laws in its first session, in large part due to internecine fights among House Republicans, who took control of the chamber after the 2022 midterms. The GOP won the House with a smaller majority than expected, and it took four days and 15 ballots for Republicans to elect Kevin McCarthy as speaker.

After McCarthy later struck deals with Democrats to prevent a default on the national debt and avoid a government shutdown, a handful of Republicans pushed for his ouster. McCarthy was booted from the speakership on Oct. 3, 2023, and the position remained vacant until Oct. 25, when Republicans finally coalesced around Mike Johnson. Without a speaker, lawmaking in the House ground to a halt.

The 118th also follows a string of historically productive Congresses, measured purely in pages. Looking at the number of pages of public laws enacted, the 117th was the most productive of the period tracked by Brookings, which begins in 1947. The 116th was the second-most productive, and the 115th was the third-most.

The 117th and 116th’s legislative page bounties can be partially credited to the COVID-19 pandemic, which produced large emergency spending bills in both.

It’s also easier to pass bills when just one party controls both the legislative and executive branches. In the 115th, Republicans controlled both chambers of Congress and the White House; Democrats held the trifecta in the 117th.

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(Ryan Kelly contributed to this report.)

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