The 113th Congress — this Congress, that is currently back on Capitol Hill for a few days before graduation — has been the least productive in terms of bills passed since at least 1973. That's as far back as GovTrack.us goes, and it's as good a metric as any. This has been the least productive Congress in 40 years, because it has enacted 185 laws — 99 fewer than the 112th Congress, which was reviled as the least productive in history two years ago.
The Fightin' 113th can turn it around. It just (as of 2 p.m. Wednesday) went back into session; the House has scheduled 15 days before the end of the year in which to get things done in a lame-duck session. That means that Congress needs to pass 100 bills over two weeks to not break this ignominious and largely made-up record. That's just shy of seven bills a day.
A look at lame duck sessions over the course of those 40 years indicates that such activity is ... unlikely. The most laws that went into effect between Election Day and the end of a Congress was 58, in the 111th Congress.
What's interesting to note is that most of those bills started their lives in Congress well in advance of the lame duck session. Many of them became law not through action from Congress, but because presidents finally got around to signing off on them. Which offers some hope! Except that, according to GovTrack, there are no passed bills waiting for a presidential signature.
The most bills both introduced and passed in a lame duck is 14, again during the 111th Congress that ended four years ago. Of course, the House could pass one of the 85 bills that have already passed the Senate or the Senate could pass one of the 383 bills that have already passed the House. (That data point has become somewhat contentious.) So there are as many as 468 bills that could be quickly sent over to the president.
Which won't happen. Those bills have all almost certainly been considered for votes at some point in the past — in the sense of thought about briefly and then rejected. The Senate that passed its bills is Democratic (for now) and the House that passed its bills is Republican (forever). That's a key reason why the 113th hasn't gotten anything done — and with a brand-new Congress with Republicans in total charge looming, why it almost certainly won't.
