House Majority Leader Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) started the chamber’s seven-week recess a day early last week, and lawmakers aren’t expected back until after the November election — a decision that drew complaints and mockery from both sides of the aisle as well as the American public.
Lawmakers and voters alike complained that the House has not been in session enough — or been productive enough — since members were sworn in back in January 2025.
“Canceling yet another day of votes is unacceptable,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-South Carolina). “The founders did not envision taking this much time off and still getting paid.”
“Speaker Johnson has canceled 62 of 261 scheduled voting days — that’s almost a quarter of the days that Congress could have been in session,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-California).
It is true that Johnson has scheduled some extra recesses this Congress, and that government shutdowns have left the halls of Congress empty for weeks. But the number of days House lawmakers have been in session is actually fairly typical, at least compared to recent Congresses.
So far this Congress, according to figures from the House Clerk’s office and the Congressional Record, the House has been in session a total of 294 days (as of Sept. 22). That number includes days where the chamber held pro forma sessions — meaning, little to no activity occurred on the floor — but the vast majority of those 294 days saw bills being passed, action on the floor, and debate.
While 294 days in session is fewer than the number of working days in the four most recent Congresses — the House was in session 366 days in the 115th Congress (2017-2019), for example — it is actually not rare for the House to be in session for fewer than 300 days. The House has already been in session more this year than it was in each Congress from the 104th through the 111th.
Critics were quick to claim last week that not only has this Congress not been in session enough, but it also has not been productive enough.
Johnson has rebutted that claim, saying, “This House has been the second-most productive in terms of legislation in the history of the institution, since 1789. We passed over 900 pieces of legislation.”
The speaker did admit that many of those bills have not become law: “Right now, about 700 of those bills are sitting in the Senate awaiting action,” he said, blaming Senate Democrats for that reality.
Johnson has not said where his figures come from, and his office did not respond to questions about how they were calculated. Congress.gov shows that the House has passed over 900 measures — but that number includes simple resolutions and 24 concurrent resolutions, measures that do not become law, but that include procedural rules and committee elections.
A Washington Post analysis using the most recent vote tallies from Congress.gov, alongside the Congressional Record’s résumé of congressional activity, final bill counts from the National Archives and bill passage records from the House Clerk’s office, found that, as of Aug. 31, this House has passed 732 bills that could become law. By Sept. 22, 111 House-passed bills have actually become law.
Using the same metrics and resources, The Post was able to calculate how many bills the previous 15 Houses passed, and how many became law.
According to our analysis, the 115th Congress passed the most bills, while the 112th passed the least. In terms of bills that actually became law, however, the 106th Congress passed the most, at 580, and 118th the least, at 274.
The current Congress has had fewer bills signed into law than any other Congress of the last 30 years. There’s still some time for that to change, however — the 119th session ends in January.
Congressional watchdogs have noted that statistics like days worked or bills passed are not enough to properly quantify how productive this House has been. Instead, many argue that what Congress did with its time — and what was in the bills it did pass — must be taken into account.
Daniel Schuman, executive director of the nonpartisan American Governance Institute, which monitors Congress, said observers should take into consideration whether the House passed key bills like appropriations measures, such as the National Defense Authorization Act, which appropriates fund for the military; must-pass legislation like budget measures, and complex legislation, like the One Big Beautiful Bill Act or the Affordable Care Act.
Outside of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the current Congress has seen some success in passing big-ticket measures: In July, both chambers passed what is considered one of the most significant pieces of federal housing reform in over three decades. Both chambers also passed the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act — which was signed into law on Friday.
Other key pieces of legislation (namely, critical budget funding measures including appropriations bills and the farm bill) have remained stalled this Congress.
Here’s where the House stands on that:
According to the Pew Research Center, Congress has passed all required appropriations on time only four times, the last time being in 1997. Congress last passed a new farm bill, a critical piece of legislation for key agriculture programs, in 2018, and the last time a major multiyear federal surface transportation reauthorization bill passed was in 2021. Meanwhile, the National Defense Authorization Act and the Water Resources Development Act were successfully passed during the last Congress.
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