The vast majority of the current Congress are incumbents. Of the 100 senators in the 119th Congress, 14 are new to the Senate. Of those, seven had previously served in the House, making essentially 93 congressional incumbents and seven newbies. Of the 435 House seats, there are four vacancies and 356 incumbents. Of the 75 newly elected representatives, four had previously served in the House, and three were once staffers. More than 83% of congressional seats are filled essentially by people who have been there before.
This is important to note because the 118th Congress was probably one of the least productive ever. I discussed its meager output here. By the end of the two-year session, of 16,565 pieces of proposed legislation, 274 became law. That’s a paltry 1.65%. Thirteen were vetoed; none of those were overridden. Vice President Harris broke seven ties in the Senate.
Of the 274 laws, all but 21 were single-issue laws and most of those were quite short. The others were mostly funding bills. Nineteen bills dealt with the military or veterans; eight addressed tribal issues. Fifty-four were funding, reauthorizations, or extensions of funding. Ninety-two dealt with some other policy issues. Three were appointments. More than one-third were commemorative bills. They named various post offices and other federal buildings, issued medals and commemorative coins, and designated the bald eagle as America’s national bird.
Image from Pixabay. Public domain.
Of the 118th’s output, 138 (50%) were signed in December 2024 and 29 (10%) in November. Granted, this was a divided Congress, with a largely absent Chief Executive and an administration that seemed unsure whether or not it had recovered from the COVID panic. Nevertheless, a pitiful amount was accomplished. The Speaker and the Leader need to make their folks understand that there will not be a repeat of this; no more ambling along, business as usual, taking their time to get things done. They must work at the speed of Trump.
President Trump has until the mid-terms to accomplish the bulk of what he promised. Many in the majority are there because they drafted in behind him in his race to win office. That momentum cannot be lost in the marble halls of the Senate and the House.
Tasks Ahead
Finalizing the FY-2025 budget. Congress needs to let go of personal agenda items, petty grievances, back-room deals, and the members’ history of horse-trading. Give us a clean bill and time to read it and communicate with our representatives. Eliminate all the costs that have been identified for savings so far.’
Getting to work on the FY-2026 budget. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if that was passed on time for a change? And it should reflect a significantly smaller government. How? Let go of massive control and regulation and devolve to the states what should be managed by the people through their local efforts and representatives. Understand that the federal government is neither Mommy nor Santa Clause. It cannot be all things to all people; it can’t even be most things for most people. Government has a limited set of responsibilities, and it should stick to those. That should make preparing an even smaller FY-2027 budget a breeze.
Approving another thousand or so Presidential appointments, though the number will be reduced as executive agencies and offices are eliminated or downsized.
Turning President Trump’s executive orders into law has already been promised. Not only all of POTUS’s current E.O.s, but the entire body of them should be reviewed. Any still in effect should be reviewed for conversion into law, reversing them via legislation, or retaining them as executive orders. They should also be reviewed to see if legislative action prohibiting those orders in the future is needed.
Reviewing recent laws. All legislation produced by the 117th and 118th congressional sessions during the Biden administration should be reviewed for either retention or abolition via legislative action.
Reviewing the whole United States Code. The current body of law, the United States Code, should be systematically reviewed, just like the recent laws, retaining, updating, or culling them as necessary.
As part of this, for example, now that USAID is to be no more, every mention of it in the USC needs to be amended, whether to close down programs assigned to USAID, or shift them elsewhere. This goes for every agency change/reduction, whether once mislabeled as “independent,” cabinet-level, or subordinate, including the ones already addressed, such as the Department of Education and FEMA.
Review the Code of Federal Regulations badly needs review, an idea I introduced here. Determinations should be made whether to codify a regulation into law, eliminate it partially or entirely, or leave it as applicable to federal agency operations only. Again, if an agency is abolished or significantly changed, every regulation needs to be updated.
Periodically, legislation is revised and reissued. Today, Congress should look at:
We anticipate that D.O.G.E. is already at work sussing out duplications and overlapping responsibilities within and among agencies.
This is a massive job. It will require several task forces of congressional staff, agency representatives, and White House advisors to get this work done. Congress needs to spend some money, hire more staff for the duration, and occupy some of the empty federal space around DC.
Where to find such staff? Campaign staff from the presidential and congressional races would most likely jump at the chance to be involved in this historic endeavor. As federal staffing is reduced, some of those folks could be brought on temporarily as subject matter experts. Not all those being laid off are on the left.
We the People like how President Trump invited us to participate with D.O.G.E. in addressing many of these issues. As congressional working groups are established, an e-suggestion box should be set up for each.
There’s a lot to do and little time. If the 119th can get on the stick and start working at the speed of Trump, we will reward them generously with another term in office. Leaving things to the last minute, as the 118th did, will only get folks primaried. We don’t want that. We want the 119th Congress to go down in history as the most thoughtful, productive congress ever. Let’s Make Congress Great Again!
Anony Mee is the nom de blog of a retired public servant who X-tweets at oh_yeahMee.
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