Faith on the Hill
While there has been a decades-long decline in the Christian share of U.S. adults, 88% of the voting members in the new 118th Congress identify as Christian. That is only a few points lower than their share in the late 1970s.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
While there has been a decades-long decline in the Christian share of U.S. adults, 88% of the voting members in the new 118th Congress identify as Christian. That is only a few points lower than their share in the late 1970s.
The current Senate has managed to clear the 60-vote hurdle to avoid a filibuster on several of its main legislative achievements.
The 117th Congress’ total legislative output stands at 36 laws – only 30 of which count, by our criteria, as substantive legislation.
No lame-duck session in the nearly 5 decades for which data is available has been as legislatively productive as that of the 116th Congress.
The vast majority of proposed amendments die quiet, little-mourned deaths in committees and subcommittees.
Congress passed 113 laws, 87 of them substantive, in 2015, making it the most productive first session since 2009.
Legislative productivity may be on an upswing, as lawmakers enacted more bills before their August break than either of the two preceding Congresses.
Some political observers predict that Obama will be using his veto pen a lot more in his last two years in office than he did in the first six. Recent history indicates that presidents do veto more bills when both houses of Congress are controlled by the opposing party.
Congress enacted 57 laws — just 49 of them substantive — in the first session of its two-year term, the smallest first-year legislative output in nearly two decades.
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