Just a quick update to my earlier posts from June and September on how many laws have been enacted by the 113th Congress in comparison to the 111th and 112th Congresses. From August 9th to November 6th, a period of 90 days, the 113th had actually enacted more laws than the 112th Congress had at a comparable time in the 2 year cycle. But Starting November 7th, the 113th fell behind the 112th again. As of the most recent legislation congress-summary.com lists as having been passed (extending the Undetectable Firearms Act of 1988 for 10 years, signed by the president on December 9th) the 113th has enacted 57 laws compared to the 63 the 112th had passed. (The 111th was up to 115 at this point.)
The 113th is a little behind the 112th at the moment, but actually they have been tracking each other pretty closely so far. It will be interesting to see if the gap widens in the next three months, or if the 113th catches up with the 112th again.
Anyway, this isn’t perhaps the best measure of Congressional productivity in the world, and depending on who you talk to, Congress passing fewer laws might be either bad or good. But it is still a fun data series to track.
Here are the charts:
