Congress's productive 2025 (And don't let anyone tell you otherwise)

The media loves to tell you your government isn't working, even when it is. Don't let anyone tell you 2025 was an unproductive year for Congress. [Edit: To clarify, I don't mean the government is working for you.]

1,976 pages of new law

At 1,976 pages of new law enacted since President Trump took office, including an increase of the national debt limit by $4 trillion, any journalist telling you not much happened in Congress this year is sleeping on the job.

Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page "reconciliation" bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. Also exempt from the filibuster was the "rescissions" bill which slashed most funding for foreign aid (saving about $800 million and potentially causing 1 million deaths world-wide and a geopolitical vacuum that China is ready to fill) and public broadcasting (saving about $100 million).

Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country's population. I don't think that's ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)

Earlier this month, Congress passed the 1,259-page National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly bill that sets military and related policies. This year, the NDAA incorporated 40 other bills on a range of topics, including police first aid kits and reuniting Korean American families with family members in North Korea. It also included a provision intended to force the Secretary of Defense to provide more information on the military strikes on Venezuelan civilian boats.

Using a rarely-used rule to override the Speaker of the House, legislators passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the Trump Administration to release Epstein files. It's incredibly significant any time the Speaker loses control over the floor since setting the floor schedule is the Speaker's most important job.

Congress also quashed numerous Biden Administration regulations.

And the Senate confirmed 341 Trump nominees, which is a fairly fast pace.

196 bills enacted

196 bills were enacted. The mainstream media will tell you it's only 61 because they don't look at what's inside omnibus bills. Fewer bills are getting a vote and presidential signature, but they are getting longer and longer and often bundle a number of other bills. (That's a trend that started decades ago.)

The 1,976 pages Trump signed into law is on the low side: More than Reagan (1,528) and GW Bush (1,024) did by this point in their terms, less than the first Bush (2,518), Clinton (2,705), Obama (3,478), Trump in his first term (2,236), and Biden (2,450).

But more isn't better, and not every page of legislation enacted is actually important.

The reverse is also true. The just two pages cutting foreign aid has enormous domestic and geopolitical consequences.

What Congress hasn't done

It's also true that there are things that Congress hasn't done. Like not being in session. House Republicans took their chamber out of session for some 40 days vowing to not negotiate with Democrats to end October's government shutdown, only to come back into session to approve a bill negotiated with Democrats in the Senate.

They could have used that time to figure out agency funding levels for the remainder of the fiscal year after January. Instead, another government shutdown may be around the corner. (Congress is supposed to have figured this out before the fiscal year began on October 1.)

Nor has Congress done much for government efficiency, allowing Trump to fabricate cuts and fire Inspectors General, the abuse watchdogs at federal agencies. Republicans also hope to downsize Congress's abuse investigators at the Government Accountability Office. These cuts would cost taxpayers billions of dollars by allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to go unchecked. Or more likely, abuse would be checked just when it advances the President's interests.

Congress has also been silent on Trump's tariffs, despite the power to tariff being reserved to Congress. Congress could also address the Trump Administration's illegal deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, or the swirling conflicts of interest in the Trump family.

Congress's productive 2025 (And don't let anyone tell you otherwise) was originally published by GovTrack and is republished with permission.