How the #House Slumped to Historic Lows of #Productivity in 2025
Despite holding a governing trifecta, #Republicans labored to steer the tightly divided House, with fewer votes & fewer bills that became #law than almost any session in the last two decades.
#Congress #law #GOP #dysfunction #PublicDisservice #Trump #MikeJohnson
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2026/01/17/us/politics/house-republicans-majority-productivity.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
@Nonilex trump seems to be replacing that inactivity by the legislative branch with his own hyperactivity of the executive branch 🙄
@Nonilex
on the other hand, Trump has issued a record number of executive orders.
Even by the standards of an institution that has set records for #dysfunction in recent years, the #Republican-led #Congress in 2025 hit new lows for #productivity.
Plagued by a razor-thin majority, intraparty divisions & a fear of doing anything that might draw #Trump’s ire, Speaker #MikeJohnson toiled to keep the #House running.
#MikeJohnson left the chamber out of session for a nearly 8-wk period that coincided with the longest govt #shutdown in history. He maneuvered to avoid politically difficult votes on canceling #Trump’s #tariffs, releasing the #EpsteinFiles & extending #healthcare subsidies, ultimately prompting his own rank-&-file to team with #Democrats to go around him & force action. And he presided over a free-for-all of censures & reprimands on the #House floor as lawmakers’ frustrations boiled over.
Fed up with the toxicity & inertia, some #Republicans, including once-loyal #Trump allies like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, headed for the exits, diminishing the majority’s already thin voting margin.
A look at some key metrics illustrates the cost & scale of the #dysfunction.
#House members cast 362 votes in 2025, the 2nd-lowest count in the last quarter century. The only other year in that time frame when the House cast fewer votes was 2020, during the COVID pandemic.
