2023, The Year Congress Did Jack Shit

Pitiful, just pitiful.

Dec 31, 2023

The 118th Congress, which subjected us to a MAGA-controlled House of Representatives, was the least productive in modern history. Sure, if we defined “productivity” by the number of amusing “Saturday Night Live sketches” or “Daily Show” segments, this Congress would have its fair share of achievements. However, based on the actual business of government, this Congress has failed utterly.

Here’s a handy visual aide from the folks at Axios. It tracks bills signed into law from 1989, the holy year that gave us Elizabeth Olsen, to 2023, the year that George Santos won his first Olympic gold medal in fencing.

This is some sad shit. The 118th Congress must feel like Ted Cruz when he’s changing in the Senate locker room.

It’s only fair and balanced to point out that we currently have a divided government. Republicans control the House but Democrats hold the Senate and the presidency. There’s not much on their lengthy wish list of evil that House Republicans could achieve. (The Democrat-led Senate, on the other hand, invites you to peruse these 99 pages of judicial confirmations.) However, the most productive Congress since Elizabeth Olsen’s birth was the 106th, when Republicans controlled the House and Senate and Bill Clinton was still president (no thanks to the Republicans who’d just tried to remove him from office). Nonetheless, they still passed an impressive number of bills, even with a confessed child molester as speaker.

The Democratic-controlled 117th Congress, with a razor-thin majority and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema-shaped anchors, passed exponentially more bills that actually benefitted people. (No joke: It was 284 to 22.) The MAGA mad Republicans in the House couldn’t even stop fighting each other long enough to torment us with stupid bills like one that would’ve saved patriotic gas stoves from the drag queen Left. The nihilist wing blocked that bill and some other dumb ones as petty revenge for Temp Speaker Kevin McCarthy negotiating a critical deal with Democrats to avoid a global recession. Then they just sent everyone home. When Matt Gaetz ousted McCarthy as speaker, the House ground to a halt for three weeks.

Poor Republican Rep. Chip Roy from Texas — so eager to slash social programs and drop kick the poor through the goalposts of life — screamed at his own party on the House floor last month over all their wasted opportunities. He was furious that Republicans had worked with cootie-having Democrats to keep the government from defaulting on its debts. He also lamented that Republicans hadn’t forced Biden to build a border wall with his bare hands. (I’m kidding — although Roy’s rant wasn’t noticeably more rational.)

“One thing!” he shouted, helpfully contributing to Democratic campaign ads. “I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing. One. That I can go campaign on and say we did. One!”

If you’re a stupid person, you might boast about how House Republicans finally brought Hunter Biden to justice. No, right now, we’re talking about any serious legislation that the House passed this year, even by accident, while Republicans were otherwise occupied with Hunter Biden revenge porn or attacking trans children.

Most of the 22 bills that made it out of that horror show with minimal opposition were relatively uncontroversial measures. This very brief highlight reel would include renaming Veteran Affairs clinics and approving a coin that will commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps.

Those are bills that someone’s mother would definitely put up on their refrigerator. So, let’s close out 2023 with a snarky round of applause for the 118th Congress. Next year will probably be worse.