So Far, the 119th Congress Is Among the Least Productive of the Past 40 Years

Congress has many roles in the U.S. political system, including aiding constituents, approving presidential nominees and overseeing the executive branch. Its main job, however, is passing laws – something congresspeople have done a lot less of in recent years.

The 119th Congress has enacted 121 laws since it convened in January 2025. That’s the second fewest of any Congress in the past four decades, according to a Pew Research Center analysis. Only the 118th Congress had enacted fewer laws (106) by this point in its two-year term.

About this research

This analysis looks at how many laws the current Congress has passed compared with prior Congresses.

Why did we do this?

Pew Research Center does research to inform the public, journalists and decision-makers. This analysis is the latest in a series that helps put current political conditions into broader context.

How did we do this?

We examined each law enacted by the past 20 Congresses using Congress.gov, an online repository of legislative information maintained by Library of Congress.

In this analysis, “laws” refers to “public laws” – that is, laws of general applicability as opposed to “private laws” that benefit specific people. The vast majority of the laws Congress passes are public laws. We didn’t examine the relative handful of private laws. Nor did we analyze bills that passed Congress but were vetoed by the president and so never became law.

We coded every law as either “ceremonial” or “substantial.” Ceremonial laws are intended primarily to honor or recognize an individual, group or cause, such as by renaming federal buildings and other public facilities; authorizing commemorative coins or Congressional Gold Medals; permitting outside groups to erect memorials on federal land; and appointing citizen regents to the Smithsonian Institution’s board – typically a noncontroversial practice until recently. (In the past, laws that designated special days and months or expressed nonbinding policy statements also were considered ceremonial, but Congress has mostly stopped passing such laws.)

Substantive laws, by contrast, are those that spend money, create or change permanent law, order government officials to do something, acquire or dispose of land or otherwise have some real-world impact, no matter how limited.

We also noted the date each measure officially became law. For each Congress, we categorized “lame-duck laws” as those that became law on or after Election Day near the end of its term.  In a small number of cases, bills passed by Congress before Election Day but not signed into law until afterward are included in those totals.

By our deliberately generous criteria, 109 of the laws passed by the current Congress are “substantive” – meaning they spend money, create or amend permanent law, transfer land or have some sort of other real-world impact, no matter how limited. That, too, is the second-lowest total of the past four decades, behind only the 84 substantive laws enacted by the previous Congress before its election-season break.

In years past, Congress did a lot more legislating. The 100th (1987-89) through the 110th (2007-09) Congresses enacted an average of 440 laws each – including 306 substantive laws – before Election Day. That’s about twice the preelection output of the average Congress since then.

Despite its relatively low productivity, the current Congress has produced some major legislation. Perhaps the most significant is the package of tax and spending changes nicknamed the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which became law in July 2025.

Other notable laws this term include:

• A new regulatory framework for the stablecoin industry
• A measure rescinding $9 billion in previously authorized spending on foreign assistance and public broadcasting
• A law ordering the executive branch to disclose all its investigative files about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein
• A package of regulatory changes and financial incentives intended to expand the nation’s housing supply

Congress also passed 23 laws to overturn various Biden-era regulations, as well as one to void a Washington, D.C., local law. Together, these reversals comprise 20% of laws passed by the current Congress so far.

The current Congress still has more than two months to run, including a planned post-midterm session that may boost Congress’ productivity numbers considerably. Such sessions are often called “lame-duck” sessions because senators and representatives who’ve lost reelection can still participate and shape policy.

For years now, Congress has been pushing more and more of its workload to late in each session – past the point when members have to worry about reelection. Sometimes that means a party that has lost control of one or both chambers can still pass (or block) legislation while the incoming party waits to take power.

In the 100th Congress (1987-89), for example, 78 measures became law on or after Election Day 1988, amounting to 11% of its entire legislative output. For the next two decades, the share of “lame-duck laws” seldom exceeded 25%, and some Congresses held no lame-duck session at all.

That changed starting in the 2010s, when Republican-led Congresses were often at loggerheads with the Democratic Obama administration. More than a third (38%) of the legislative output of the 113th Congress didn’t become law until after Election Day 2014. And by the 118th Congress of 2023-25, 168 out of the 274 measures it ultimately enacted, or 61%, didn’t become law until the lame-duck period.