Congress, in case you have been living on another planet for the last few years, doesn't do all that much these days.
The Capitol building hasn't been getting much done these days.
There's plenty of reasons for that but the largest is that House Republicans have been riven by factionalism that, when combined with Democrats unwilling to cross the aisle to lend support for the GOP's agenda has made passing anything extremely difficult.
(The farm bill in the House is a good example of this trend. After the initial farm bill vote failed thanks to the revolt of five dozen Republicans, a second bill, which stripped out provisions for food stamps, was approved without a single Democratic vote.)
So, how does this House stack up against past years when it comes to productivity? Not so well, according to the new Vital Statistics on Congress, which shows that the 112th Congress passed just 561 bills, the lowest number since they began keeping these stats way back in 1947.
The second lowest number of bills passed in a single Congress — 611 — was back in the 104th Congress, the two-year session that followed Republicans re-taking control of the House in 1994 after four decades of Democratic control.
An important caveat: A raw count of bills passed is a decidedly simplistic way to measure true legislative productivity. Not all legislation is created equal; some bills matter more in the grand sweep of things. So, passing some sort of immigration legislation isn't really the same thing as naming post offices and the like. But, it's seen that way in this chart.
rest http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2013/07/17/the-least-productive-congress-ever/
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