As the 118th Congress ends, most lawmakers would probably like to erase 2023-2024 from their memories. Over the last two years, they managed to break records and pioneer historic firsts – but not the positive kind folks might later brag about. A look back at the big stories shows not a trend of legislative success, but rather of divisiveness, in-party fighting, and upheaval – especially in the House of Representatives. And compared to previous congresses, the 118th saw an embarrassingly small number of bills signed into law.
Chaos and Strife
From the very beginning, the 118th Congress was plagued by strife as Republican lawmakers fought over who would lead the new GOP majority in the House. It took an impressive 15 roll call votes to elect Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) as speaker of the House, holding up the start of congressional work for several days. That’s the longest it has taken since before the Civil War. The longest ever, of course, comes from the 34th Congress, which took 133 rounds of voting over about two months.
And then he didn’t even hold the gavel a full year.
McCarthy was ousted after some in his own party called a vote to vacate his speakership. Democrats were only too happy to oblige, and so out with McCarthy and – eventually – in with Mike Johnson (R-LA). But it wasn’t quick. Rep. Patrick McHenry of North Carolina served in the position temporarily so the House could continue its business while working on electing a permanent speaker, a process which took 22 days.
Johnson himself then faced a vote to vacate but was saved when Democrats stepped in to keep him in the role. Now, Johnson goes into a vote on January 3 to determine whether or not he’ll retain the gavel – and it’s unlikely he’ll have many allies across the aisle this time.
The Least Successful Congress in How Long?
Before being ousted from the roll and eventually dropping out of Congress entirely, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy initiated an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden, but even in a GOP-led House, it floundered and failed. Over the remainder of the two sessions, House Republicans went on to launch eight other impeachment attempts, including against Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Kamala Harris, Defense Secretary Llyod Austin, and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. All failed but the second try against Mayorkas, which passed by a single vote, 214-213.
The Senate quickly dismissed the charges.
Amid all this turmoil, very little actual legislating got done. The 118th Congress passed just 209 bills that went on to be signed into public law – and remember, a good number of those are just agreements to rename some obscure public building! So how does that compare? Not well. The previous 117th, which enjoyed a Democrat majority in the House and an effective majority in the Senate (technically it was a tie, but the tie-breaking VP was also a Democrat). Under this effective trifecta, there were 362 public laws enacted.
But going back a little further, we have the 116th, a government so divided that the Democrat-controlled House successfully impeached President Donald Trump not once, but twice. Still, then-House Speaker Nanci Pelosi (D-CA), Trump, and the Republican-led Senate managed to enact 344 public laws.
The 118th, based purely on public laws enacted, has been the least productive Congress perhaps for the last 100 years or more. One can track the number of public laws enacted by any Congress going back to 1951 on Congress.gov – and all the way back to the beginning in the Congressional Record and the old Annals of Congress. The only two in recent history that came close to having this low a number were the 112th and 113th, which still managed 283 and 296, respectively. The rest in the last thirty years or so passed bills numbering in the 300s and 400s. Before that, Congress seemed to enjoy a decades-long period of prolific bipartisan legislating, with numbers averaging in the 600s to the 800s, going back to the 80th Congress in the late 1940s, even occasionally dipping into the 900s and once breaking 1,000.
The Unknown Unknowns
Of course, to determine whether this abysmal record is actually good or bad for the Americans who pay these lawmakers’ salaries, one must look at the laws that are passed. Every law that makes it through Congress adds to the ever-growing leviathan that is our federal government. Who even knows how many federal laws there are, specifically? The government doesn’t even know. The Library of Congress merely explains that it’s impossible to know. An attempt was made in 1982, but the man in charge of it, Ronald Gainer of the Justice Department, eventually gave up and famously said “you will have died and been resurrected three times” and still not have answered the question.”
Do Americans enjoy greater personal liberties under this legislative burden? From that point of view, perhaps the 118th didn’t do so poorly after all – terrible fiscal record aside, of course. Still, history will not remember this Congress well. And it’s likely to haunt the dreams – and re-election efforts – of the lawmakers themselves, especially Republicans. Can the GOP turn it around, though, in 2025 and 2026 with Republican control of both chambers of Congress and the White House – or will the intraparty squabbling in the lower chamber continue to hold them back?
