113th Congress narrowly avoids ‘least productive’ status: report

Thanks in part to a spurt of relative productivity during Capitol Hill lawmakers’ recent lame-duck session, the 113th Congress narrowly beat out the 112th in terms of legislation passed to avoid a potential label of “least productive” in modern history.

The Congress that will give way to the 114th next month enacted 296 laws, 13 more than the 2011-2012 Congress, according to Pew. Of those 296, 212 were “substantive” and 84 “ceremonial,” such as the naming of buildings.

The 112th Congress, meanwhile, enacted 208 “substantive” laws and 75 “ceremonial” ones, Pew’s report said.

The expiring Congress had passed just 185 laws when it broke for its election-period recess,but passed 111 measures in the post-election lame-duck session, including a trillion-0dollar measure that will fund most of the government through the end of the fiscal year.

Of course, Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, has said in the past that Congress shouldn’t be judged on how many laws it creates, but on how many it repeals, and Republicans on the campaign trail this year pointed to the number of bills passed by the GOP-led House only to languish in a U.S. Senate controlled by Democrats.

President Obama and Senate Democrats, meanwhile, hold out a bipartisan bill that overhauls the country’s immigration system passed by the Senate last year as a prominent example of the House’s failing to act on legislation sent from Congress’s upper chamber.