Many posts have discussed the state of Congress.
With fewer than 40 bills signed into law as of Monday, the House and Senate set a modern record for lowest legislative output in the first year of a new presidency, according to data maintained by C-SPAN and Purdue University.
Despite that lack of productivity, the Senate held more roll-call votes (659) than any odd-numbered year of this century, with almost 60 percent of them focused on advancing President Donald Trump’s nominations to the executive and judicial branches.
The House, meanwhile, set a 21st-century record for fewest votes cast (362) in the first session of a two-year Congress. It held barely half as many votes as in 2017, which was Trump’s first year in office and when Republicans held the majority.
Perhaps not surprisingly, an unusually large number of House members — 24 Republicans and 19 Democrats — have decided to leave the chamber either to retire or run for other office. That places the chamber on pace to set a 21st-century record for retirements in one Congress, according to C-SPAN and Purdue.
Congress did pack a lot into the One Big Beautiful Bill:
Such strategy has accelerated with each new president and his congressional majority. In 2001, George W. Bush and his GOP allies pushed through a massive tax cut on the fast-track process known as reconciliation, averting a potential filibuster in the Senate. Still, the Congress managed to send 107 other laws to the president’s desk for his signature that year.
In 2017, Republicans passed a massive tax cut through reconciliation plus sent an additional 75 pieces of legislation to Trump’s desk before Christmas.
This year’s Congress also has a massive policy bill but otherwise only about half the output of Trump’s first term. Only in 2023, with a split Congress and the Biden-Harris White House already focused on a presidential election, were fewer laws passed in the first year of a Congress, according to 32 years of data kept by C-SPAN and Purdue.
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One area in which Republicans became more productive was in eliminating federal regulations via the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress a certain amount of time to consider new regulations and, with fast-track procedures, vote to eliminate them.The act rarely had been used since its passage in 1996, but recent Republican majorities have relied on it.
The process, of course, takes time away from legislation that could be considered on the House and Senate floors.
