Nothing lame about this lame duck: 116th Congress had busiest post-election session in recent history
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.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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.
Americans voted in record numbers in last year’s presidential election, casting nearly 158.4 million ballots.
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.
President Obama’s recent interviews with Buzzfeed and Vox, and his embrace of online news and social media more generally, stands in a long tradition of presidents employing novel communications technologies to speak to Americans directly.
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.
Scotland’s independence referendum stands out from most other such votes in two ways: its peaceful nature and doubt as to its outcome.
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