Tensions ran high on Capitol Hill ahead of the Thanksgiving recess as Congress hustled to avoid a government shutdown.

Two members of the House Oversight Committee engaged in a shouting match; on the other side of the hill, a sitting senator all but challenged the head of the Teamsters union to a fight; and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was embroiled in controversy for colliding with another member in the halls — though some called it a “sucker punch.”

But for all their sound and fury, lawmakers did not have much actual law-making to show for their autumn in Washington, much less the entire year. 

What You Need To Know

  • The current Congress has achieved a nearly historic record of inaction since it convened in January, passing just 22 bills into law — the least productive first 11 months of Congress since 1931

  • By comparison, the last 10 Congresses have averaged 390 bills signed into law during each two-year session

  • Fierce party division and infighting has plagued the House GOP, resulting in the ouster of Kevin McCarthy from the speakership and an inability to come together on Republican priorities

  • New Speaker Mike Johnson will be under pressure to wrangle the House GOP and cut spending, but is unlikely to win grace from either side of the aisle

Since convening in January, the 118th Congress has passed just 22 bills that were signed into law. According to historical data, that makes this the least productive first 11 months of any Congress since the 72nd Congress, which convened in 1931.

By comparison, the last 10 Congresses have averaged 390 bills signed into law during each two-year session.

“We coined the ‘Do Nothing’ Congress almost 80 years ago, but it’s more true now than ever,” said Jessica Levinson, a professor at the Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. “So we have a Congress that’s really just not passing legislation.

There’s no single factor to their inaction, Levison said. One could blame the Republican Party’s slim majority in the House, exacerbated by intra-party fighting among the GOP’s membership. 

“Another factor here is that there are fewer competitive seats. And so there are more representatives who don’t have an incentive to actually compromise,” Levinson said. 

To that point, Congress spent much of this fall trying to avoid a government shutdown — twice. And in the House, GOP factions set out to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. as speaker — a plan that Democrats happily obliged to — then spent weeks trying to elect his replacement.

“A hot mess and a waste of time,” is how Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif. described the final days of the House before the break.

Lawmakers across the aisle voiced frustration, too.

“One thing! I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing, one that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!” said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, upset that when lawmakers voted last week to keep the government funded into the new year, avoiding a shutdown, they did not act on any Republican priorities.

Levinson says the concern by some Republicans that their new majority in the House could be threatened by a lack of accomplishments is real.

“If their representatives go back and aren’t able to say here’s what I did, if they’re just able to say, well, we failed to do things that would have been really bad. I blocked bad things you’re running on a record of inaction is not a great place for a candidate to be in,” she said.

House Republicans blame the Senate for the lack of legislation signed into law. But most of the bills passed by the House this year, such as the Republican-led border security bill, have been hyper-partisan, all but guaranteeing they would go nowhere in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats.

The Senate, Levinson noted, is also closely divided, and set up in such a way that every act needs 60 votes to get just about anything done. 

“I think for House Republicans to say, well, the Senate isn’t moving either…it depends on people misunderstanding the difference between what the House does and what the Senate does, and how the Senate functions,” Levinson said. The House, she said, is intended to be the people’s voice, responsive to their constituents’ needs and wants; the Senate is supposed to temper the passions of the majority. 

“Having said that, the Senate isn’t passing enormous amounts of legislation. We can say that’s because they’re evenly divided and you require essentially a supermajority for them to do much,” she said. “And, because they might know that a lot of things are dead on arrival in the House.”

The start of next year doesn’t look like it will be any more productive. Republicans and Democrats are bracing for another fight over the budget, as House Republicans under the new Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. likely seek deep cuts in spending. While some expect Johnson will earn a grace period to enact his vision for leadership, Levinson isn’t among them.

“Maybe people will forgive some rookie moves, because he really wasn’t part of leadership. But he stepped in. He knew exactly the cards he was dealt, and he asked to take over, so I don’t think that either faction of his party is likely to want to give him much grace here,” Levinson said. “And certainly the Democrats are not going to want to be particularly patient, because they feel this is really the Republicans’ own doing.”