The House has spent much of the last two months of this year trying to catch up on its work. It passed 22 bills in one recent day and held 13 committee meetings and hearings the day after.
All told, the House has passed 41 bills since the end of the government shutdown on Nov. 12. The legislation has addressed a bevy of matters ranging from strengthening the nation’s cybersecurity defenses, bolstering the protections of Americans’ civil liberties from intelligence agency investigatory activities, and upgrading the Small Business Administration‘s information technology systems.
Some of these House-approved bills have made their way to President Donald Trump’s desk for signature, such as a policy to increase cost-of-living adjustments to benefits received by veterans and a law to reduce the hassles new mothers experience bringing breast milk and equipment through airport security checkpoints.
The House has also approved several resolutions on mostly symbolic matters, such as its vote to disapprove of the “behavior of Rep. Jesús G. ‘Chuy’ García (D-IL).” García earned bipartisan opprobrium after hacking the electoral process to enable his top aide to be the sole Democratic candidate in a very blue House district.
It remains unclear whether the GOP-led chamber can make up for all the time it has lost and squandered. The chamber was rarely in session between July and mid-November, and has been working at the Capitol for around 100 days this year.
“We were gone far too long,” Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) said after the House reconvened last month after its long recess.
The GOP’s legislative approach has also sapped the House’s productivity. Frequently, it has tried to move legislation without Democratic support, a highly risky strategy, not least because the GOP has a very narrow chamber majority (219 to 213 with three empty seats). Republicans come from a wide range of legislative districts scattered across the country and have diverse interests, so, naturally, not all of them will agree on many, if not most, bills. Thus, the House GOP spent months trying to get enough of its members to support the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which lowered some taxes and made changes to various other federal policies. Wooing a dozen Democrats to vote for the bill was simply not part of the game plan.
Trump has also tripped up House action by sending mixed signals or outright reversing himself. For example, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) deployed an array of tactics to thwart a vote on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which received bipartisan support. Trump initially opposed it, but then he flip-flopped, and the bill was called up and passed nearly unanimously.
House Republicans’ effort to end the year on a high note has hit snags. They stumbled out of the blocks during the first week of December and failed to muster sufficient GOP votes to take up legislation relating to college sports. Johnson had no choice but to work with Democrats to pass the measure.
Simultaneously, an intraparty dispute broke out that imperiled Republicans’ efforts to pass the National Defense Authorization Act, a massive piece of legislation that Congress frequently uses to enact defense and non-defense policies. Outgoing Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) has demanded the bill include a provision to “require Congressional disclosure when the FBI opens counterintelligence investigations into presidential and federal candidates seeking office.” She has also promised to vote against the bill and blasted Johnson and other Republicans who dislike her amendment for getting “rolled by the Dems and deep state.”
Republicans’ efforts to get things done could all be for naught if the federal government has another long shutdown. This fall’s record-long shutdown further tanked the public’s opinion of Congress. Another shutdown may well do the same.
And the odds of a shutdown are not small. To date, Congress has passed only three of the 12 appropriations acts that will endure through the rest of the fiscal year (Sept. 30, 2026): Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, Agriculture-FDA, and Legislative Branch. The remaining nine spending laws are funded by a continuing resolution that will expire after Jan. 30.
HOUSE APPROPRIATORS EYE SMALLER SPENDING DEAL TO AVOID ‘NIGHTMARE’ JANUARY
At the time of publication, there were few signs that the House had a clear path to passing the remaining spending bills before the chamber closed for the holidays. Voters will unlikely be pleased at GOP legislators enjoying chestnuts roasting over an open fire with so much work left undone.
Worse still for Republicans is that Democrats appear to have little incentive to help them pass the nine spending bills next month. The same hurdle that caused this fall’s long government shutdown remains in place: Democrats want an extension of the Obamacare emergency subsidies first enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Kevin R. Kosar (@kevinrkosar) is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and edits UnderstandingCongress.org.
