How many laws has Congress passed in its current term?
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The 119th Congress has passed 117 laws as of September 2026. The term started in January 2025 and ends in January 2027. On average, Congress passed 453 laws during each two-year term dating back to 1981, the 97th Congress.
117
enacted during the 119th Congress (as of September 2026)
87%
of bills are referred to a committee and never leave it (as of September 2026)
Congress is 20 months into its current term. It's passed 117 laws, which is more than the 82 laws passed over the same period during the previous Congress. Compared with all 26 congressional terms since 1973, the oldest record on congress.gov, the number of laws passed during the 119th Congress is the second fewest at this point in a term.
The 119th Congress has passed the second fewest laws of the 27 terms on record at this point in a term.
Laws Congress passed from January 1973 to September 2026 (first 20 months of each term only)
How many bills has the current Congress introduced?
There have been 16,600 bills introduced in the 119th Congress so far. The president has signed almost 0.7% of them into law, while 87% have had no further action since being referred to a congressional committee.
The committee stage is the first and most consequential filter in the legislative process. The committee a bill is assigned to puts it through a markup process, where it decides whether to advance the bill or not. If the committee votes yes, the bill is “reported out of committee,” meaning it has cleared the first hurdle and can proceed to a floor vote in its chamber.
Most bills don't move past that threshold. They stall in the committee and never receive a vote at all. About 2.7% of the bills introduced were reported out of committee, meaning they cleared the first hurdle but stalled before reaching a floor vote in the full chamber.
Of the 16,600 bills introduced this Congress, 0.42% — or 69 bills — received an explicit negative vote on the floor of at least one chamber and were formally rejected, meaning they progressed further than most but ultimately did not advance toward becoming law.
87% of bills introduced in the 119th Congress have never made it out of committee.
Status of bills, as of September 2026
What issues do the bills introduced during the current Congress cover?
About 27% of the bills introduced in the 119th Congress fall into just three policy areas: Health, Armed Forces and National Security, and Taxation. Health alone accounted for about 1,900 bills, or 11.2% of the 16,600 bills introduced — more than any other of the 31 policy areas represented this session.
Legislative analysts at the Library of Congress’s nonpartisan Congressional Research Service assign each bill a single policy area based on its primary subject matter. These categories — which include energy, water resources development, sports and recreation, and immigration — provide a standardized way to track and compare what Congress is working on across sessions.
11.2% of bills introduced in the 119th Congress are related to Health policy.
Bills introduced in the 119th Congress by policy area, as of September 2026
What types of laws were passed by the current Congress?
About 35% of the laws enacted by the 119th Congress fall under just two policy areas:
- Armed Forces and National Security
- Public Lands and Natural Resources
35% of the laws enacted by the 119th Congress fall under just two policy areas.
Laws enacted by the 119th Congress by policy area, as of September 2026
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Methodology
USAFacts standardizes data, in areas such as time and demographics, to make it easier to understand and compare.
Page sources
USAFacts endeavors to share the most up-to-date information available. We sourced the data on this page directly from government agencies; however, the intervals at which agencies publish updated data vary.