3.2.2.2 – Legislative Function
3.2.3 – Interpretations and Debates
Just over halfway through its term, the 119th Congress has signed 85 bills into law. That sounds reasonable until you put it next to the two Congresses before it. The 118th Congress, which sat through divided government from 2023 to 2025, had managed just 60 by the same point and ended up being called the least productive since the 1950s. The 117th Congress, with Joe Biden in the White House and Democrats running both chambers, had passed 123 by the equivalent date.
So, the current Congress is doing better than the last one, but only about two-thirds as well as the one before, even though Republicans now hold the House, the Senate and the presidency. The headline number also hides what is actually being passed. A big chunk of the 85 laws are short joint resolutions cancelling Biden-era regulations under the Congressional Review Act. The one really substantive piece, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, crammed taxes, welfare cuts, immigration and climate funding into a single reconciliation bill that scraped through last July on a 51 to 50 Senate vote.
This matters because raw output is one of the simplest tests of how well Congress is doing its Article I job. United government on paper should make lawmaking easier, but narrow majorities, the filibuster and tight party discipline are still getting in the way. What you can see here is partisan polarisation in action, with big set-piece bills passed through reconciliation, regulatory rollback by simple majority, and most ordinary cross-party legislation quietly stuck in committee while the executive branch sets the pace.