Thank Goodness for the Least Productive Congress in Modern History

Despite a contrived, end-of-year uproar from the corporate media about how 2023 was the “least productive” year for Congress in recent memory, the fact that relatively few new laws were put on the books is one thing that the American people can be thankful for in the new year.

Overall, just 29 bills passed both chambers of the legislature last year, putting the 118th Congress on pace to pass just 58 bills, well behind prior Congresses. The 117th Congress, which ran from 2021-2022, passed a total of 358 bills, while the 116th Congress passed 334.

While some of the current gridlock can be attributed to the fact that Republicans control the House while Democrats control the Senate, the 118th Congress has been unusually unproductive even by the standards of divided government. The last three Congresses which had split control, the 104th (1995-1996) 112th (2011-2012), and 113th (2013-2014) Congresses, passed 326, 272, and 282 bills, respectively.

In fact, the 118th Congress is on pace to pass the fewest bills of any Congress since the 72nd, which met in 1931 and 1932.

The legacy media has been quick to assert that the dearth of new laws is a terrible thing for the country and the product of “Republican obstructionism.”

“Capitol Hill stunner: 2023 led to fewest laws in decades,” proclaimed Axios, going on to describe the current situation as “bleak.” People Magazine blamed “Republican infighting” and “House GOP turmoil” for the lack of new legislation, while an opinion piece for The Philadelphia Inquirer argued that the GOP House “did little but sow chaos.”

The New York Times, in remarkably similar language, also cited “chaos and paralysis that gripped the House in 2023.” Reliably left-wing opinion columnist Dana Milbank of The Washington Post simply described it as the “worst Congress ever.”

Congressional Democrats have likewise lamented their inability to pass many of their liberal policy priorities. Late last month, for instance, House Democrat Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar whined about a supposedly “historic amount of dysfunction,” blaming “extreme MAGA Republicans.”

Both Democrats and their mainstream media allies assume that passing more laws is necessarily a good thing. But the suggestion that the relative success of a Congress should be judged by the sheer amount of legislation it passes likely sounds ridiculous to most Americans outside the D.C. bubble who know that virtually every new law means less freedom, more spending, and more power for the political class.

When the American people elected a Republican House in November 2022, they explicitly did so to stop the rash of extreme legislation passed by the 117th Congress, most notably the trillion-dollar spending bills that had sent inflation soaring. The House GOP undoubtedly experienced its fair share of embarrassments and infighting during 2023 due to its slim majority, and conservatives didn’t win every battle, but the fact that Republicans had retaken the House meant that Democrats’ most radical schemes were dead on arrival.

House Republicans have also forced Senate Democrats to negotiate on spending priorities. Many of these negotiations are currently mired in stalemate (see, for instance, the current impasse over Ukraine funding and border security, and the ongoing government funding battle) but that is certainly better than the alternative of Democrats having free reign to pass whatever they wish.

Meanwhile, with a few notable exceptions, the legislation that Congress did pass in 2023 was worthwhile. After some disagreement that resulted in both sides compromising, Congress funded the military for 2024 and averted a government shutdown (for now). Congress also passed bills creating new online resources and expanding benefits for veterans, requiring the declassification of all information regarding the origins of COVID-19, and providing more support for cadets who attend military academies.

To be sure, Congress still has some important issues to address, and quickly. When lawmakers return the second week of January, they will have just a few days to pass a long-term funding bill. The border is in crisis, and Senate Democrats have refused to budge on a compromise bill to combat illegal immigration in exchange for funding for Ukraine. The two parties are also still far apart on additional measures to address the threat from China.

But on each of those issues, Republicans now have leverage that they did not have prior to 2023. As a result, voters can expect any legislation that does pass to at least incorporate some conservative priorities.

During testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2011, the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that “gridlock” in Congress was precisely the way the Founding Fathers set up the legislature to operate.

“We wanted this to be power contradicting power,” Scalia said. “Americans… should learn to love the gridlock. It’s there for a reason so that the legislation which gets out will be good legislation.”

As Scalia also noted, Alexander Hamilton explicitly says in Federalist 73 that “every institution” outlined in the Constitution is “calculated to restrain the excess of law-making and to keep things in the same state in which they happen to be at any given period.”

In other words, the 118th Congress is working exactly as the Founders intended.

Shane Harris is a writer and political consultant from Southwest Ohio. You can follow him on Twitter @ShaneHarris513.