Congress has long struggled to pass spending bills on time
Congress has passed all its required appropriations measures on time only four times in nearly five decades.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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Congress
The changing face of Congress in 7 charts
The 119th Congress is the most racially and ethnically diverse in history, and it includes the nation’s first openly transgender legislator at the federal level.
Faith on the Hill
Christians will make up 87% of voting members in the Senate and House of Representatives, combined, in the 2025-27 congressional session.
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U.S. population keeps growing, but House of Representatives is same size as in Taft era
The U.S. House of Representatives has one voting member (435 in total) for every 747,000 or so Americans. That’s by far the highest ratio of population to representatives of any industrialized democracy, and the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.
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Proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution seldom go anywhere
The vast majority of proposed amendments die quiet, little-mourned deaths in committees and subcommittees.
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Near-record number of House members not seeking re-election in 2018
More members of the U.S. House of Representatives are choosing not to seek re-election than at any time in the past quarter-century.
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There’s a large gender gap in congressional Facebook posts about sexual misconduct
About seven-in-ten women in Congress mentioned sexual misconduct in their official Facebook posts between Oct. 1 and Dec. 30, 2017, compared with 37% of men in Congress.
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Sharing the News in a Polarized Congress
Political divides in the American news landscape do not end with Americans’ preferences for different news sources; rather, they extend to how members of the U.S. Congress communicate with constituents in the digital age.
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U.S. Senate seats rarely have flipped to other party in recent special elections
Senate seats have rarely flipped to the other party in recent special elections, and turnout usually lags compared with regular elections for the same seat.
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For the first time, more Americans say 2010 health care law has had a positive than negative impact on U.S.
While the future of the Affordable Care Act is in question, the American public increasingly thinks the law has had a positive impact on the country.
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Declining Confidence in Trump, Lower Job Ratings for Congressional Leaders
Survey Report Growing numbers of Americans express little or no confidence in Donald Trump to handle an international crisis, manage the executive branch effectively and work effectively with Congress. And today, just 34% approve of Trump’s overall job performance, while 59% disapprove. However, Trump’s job approval rating is higher than those of Republican and Democratic […]
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A closer look at who did (and didn’t) pay U.S. income tax in 2015
Taxpayers with incomes of $200,000 or more paid well over half (58.8%) of federal income taxes, though they accounted for only 4.5% of all returns filed (6.8% of all taxable returns). By contrast, taxpayers with incomes below $30,000 filed nearly 44% of all returns but paid just 1.4% of all federal income tax.
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Congressional productivity is up – but many new laws overturn Obama-era rules
This Congress has passed more substantive bills so far in its session than any since 2007 – though nearly a third of them were to undo Obama-era rules.
