Congress Passed Just 34 Bills That Became Law in 2023

Newly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) speaks in the House chamber after his election at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 25, 2023. Win McNamee/Getty Images

News Analysis

A mere 34 new laws were passed during the first session of the 118th Congress, prompting debate among political analysts, legislative experts, and media on Capitol Hill as to whether the low number points to a congressional productivity crisis or something else entirely.

The number of bills that became law in 2023 was the lowest in decades. The first-session average since 1989 is 154. The highest first-session total since 1989 was that of the 102nd Congress in 1991, with 243 new bills passed and made into law, according to National Archives data compiled by The Epoch Times.

Political and legislative analysts across the ideological spectrum who were interviewed by The Epoch Times agreed almost unanimously that the sheer number of bills passed by Congress and signed into law by the president isn’t an accurate measure of the productivity of a congressional session, however.

For one thing, a measure appointing a new member to an obscure federal commission pales by comparison to one that appropriates hundreds of billions of tax dollars for medical research. Yet, each counts as one law.

With so many other numbers in the nation’s capital, there’s much more to the new-law count than meets the eye, Daniel Schuman, director of governance at the liberal-leaning POPVOX Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

“First, the count doesn’t actually count the number of enacted laws,” Mr. Schuman said.

“It’s not unusual for Congress to take a bunch of laws and roll them together into a package, like an omnibus, or if you look at the National Defense Authorization Acts (NDAA) that are passed, if you just count the public law number, that counts as one bill. But if you look inside the NDAA, there can be hundreds of laws that were included as part of it.”

Had there been regular order in the legislative process, many of those individual measures would’ve been passed separately, but for whatever reason, that didn’t happen and Congress instead opted to “roll it all together in an omnibus” toward the end of a session, he said.

Passing new legislation is far from the only thing that Congress does, Mr. Schuman said.

“Sometimes, legislative ideas are bad ideas and shouldn’t become law, so at times, leaving something alone and not changing it can be just as productive. Productivity is also, sometimes, letting things expire,” he said.

Mr. Schuman also cited the congressional oversight of executive branch appointees, actions, and agencies as a vital measure of productivity on Capitol Hill.

“That includes asking tough questions, and sometimes asking those tough questions can produce results in getting administration officials to change their policies,” he said.

There are also a multitude of additional “behind-the-scenes” things that members of Congress do, including constituent services, that should be considered in assessing congressional productivity, Mr. Schuman said.

Mainstream media outlets tended to call the slow legislative pace “unproductive” and blamed Republicans, as well as the reality of divided government with Democrats controlling the White House and the Senate.

Bipartisan Policy Center Director Michael Thorning—whose Dec. 18, 2023, post on X, formerly Twitter, drew more than 500,000 views and launched the debate—objected to ascribing too much importance to the raw number of bills passed.

“Numbers of votes, measures passed, measures signed into law are, at best, imperfect assessments of Congress’s productivity and activity. It tells you nothing of the complexity of the measures,” Mr. Thorning posted on Dec. 20, 2023.

He also wrote that raw numbers of votes or laws ultimately enacted “are also imperfect [because] they don’t reflect many legitimate activities of legislators—keeping measures they oppose from passing, conducting oversight, dealing with constituent services, etc. No doubt much work was done by Congress this year even if with little success.”

Mr. Thorning was unavailable for comment, a spokesman told The Epoch Times.

Nan Swift, resident fellow at the conservative-leaning R Street Institute’s governance program, told The Epoch Times that the quality of the bills passed is far more important than the quantity. And on that score, in her view, the first session of the 118th came up short on its most basic duty.

“I think that we should be more worried about the content of those laws than we are of the number of bills that go on to become law. And when it comes to the content, I think we can say that 2023 was a challenging congressional session, but not out of step with what we’ve seen recently,” Ms. Swift said.

House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) speaks at a news conference at the U.S. Capitol on July 14, 2023. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

“And, for sure, a lot of floor time was burned up on two different House Speaker elections, which certainly disrupted things. Congress didn’t get done the most basic thing they are required to do, and that is passing a budget and passing major spending bills in a timely manner.”

She was referring to the lengthy 15-vote process required to elevate Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to the speakership in January, and the six-week drama sparked by his Oct. 3, 2023, ouster.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) became the new Speaker but only after failed bids by House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). 

Ms. Swift was also referring to the failure of Congress to approve 12 major appropriations bills by the end of the federal government’s fiscal year on Sept. 30, 2023. 

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) keeps a tally of votes as the House of Representatives holds an election for a new Speaker of the House at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Oct. 25, 2023. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Other failures of the first session, according to Ms. Swift, include not “reauthorizing the many unauthorized programs, and this was also supposed to be a farm bill year. We didn’t see that done in a timely fashion, either. That’s been the case with the last two [five-year] farm bill cycles, so it’s not a surprise.

“But the thought that Congress can’t do the basics when it comes to setting a budget and then passing bills that meet that budget, that’s very dismaying, and it should be concerning to all taxpayers.”

Both Sides

Democratic strategist and former New York state Sen. David Carlucci contends that the poor showing of the first session is because of Republican leadership failures.

“The truth is Republicans campaign on dysfunction. They want voters to believe that the solution to an unproductive government is less government overall,” he told The Epoch Times.

“Of course, we would not be in this mess if Republicans properly used their leadership to actually govern, but pointing fingers seems to be a stronger fundraising strategy than policymaking. Polarization on both sides is definitely an issue for governance, but the party in charge needs to take accountability.”

Republican strategist Jimmy Keady, founder and president of JLK Strategies and a former Capitol Hill chief of staff, told The Epoch Times that he sees dysfunction on both sides of the aisle.

“When you look at the bills passed and signed into law, members are more concerned about tweets and social media likes than being productive members for their constituents. Just look at the three weeks we went without a speaker,” he said.

“This is a problem that has accelerated for 10 years, and we see that on both sides.”

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) speaks during a House Freedom Caucus news conference on appropriations on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 25, 2023. Madalina Vasiliu/The Epoch Times

Grover Norquist, longtime president of Americans for Tax Reform and a former adviser to then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, observed that the passage of fewer new measures is a positive consideration, given the present partisan lineup in the federal government.

“Any enacted law would require the signature of President Biden, which would require the left coalition leadership to approve the law. No law that passed those tests would be positive for America. Fewer laws, the better while the Senate and White House are in Democrat hands,” he said.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) suggested that Congress should focus first on ensuring existing laws are being followed as written before devoting time and energy to the passage of new statutes.

“The fact that very little legislation passed in 2023 is a good thing. Congress needs to enforce the current laws on the books, starting with our immigration policy to stop the invasion at our border,” he said.

“Americans want less regulation, less government, and less government overreach.”

Reforms Coming Down the Line

The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffit said that beyond the number of new bills, it’s important to consider proposals that don’t become law—these can herald policy coming down the pike.

Mr. Moffit, a veteran of senior positions in both the legislative and executive branches, pointed to several examples from 2023 that were approved by the House but not the Senate.

He described House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington’s (R-Texas) “Limit, Save, Grow Act” (HR 2811), as a major federal spending reform, and lauded the “Secure Border Act' (HR 2) passed by the House under Mr. McCarthy as the most comprehensive immigration control measure yet enacted by any Congress.

Other significant bills that passed the House in 2023 but await Senate action, according to Mr. Moffit, include the “Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act,” (HR 140) to prohibit federal employees from acting in their official capacity to promote censorship; the “Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act of 2023” (HR 734); and the “Lower Costs, More Transparency Act” (HR 5378) on medical pricing.

James Wallner, resident senior fellow in governance at the R Street Institute, told The Epoch Times that both qualitative and quantitative measures are essential to reaching commonsense conclusions about congressional productivity.

“To a certain extent, it is correct that if you pass a big omnibus measure, it includes several bills—so not all bills are created equal,” he said.

“I think you have to take the overall number and then combine it with some qualitative analysis.”

Mr. Wallner also noted that neither Mr. McCarthy nor Mr. Johnson kept the House in session during some or all of the August and Christmas recesses, which collectively could’ve provided an additional six or seven weeks to consider spending and other important bills.

“That tells you more about why Congress isn’t that productive than anything else,”  he said. “It’s not productive because they are not debating.

“It’s not that Democrats and Republicans don’t agree, it’s because they are not trying to pass legislation. They won’t bring legislation to the floor unless they first agree on it in a deal.

“But you can’t get to a deal unless you have people trying to win on the House floor. The legislative struggle is what produces compromises. That’s the only way you get it, you don’t get it any other way.”