Dec. 23, 2025, 5:59 p.m.
Before they bolted for the holidays last week, House lawmakers got busy.
They passed bills aimed at lowering health care costs, barring Medicaid coverage of gender-affirming care for minors, and speeding up the permitting process for infrastructure and energy projects. They also adopted measures removing protections for gray wolves, allowing for longer detention and scrutiny of unaccompanied minors crossing the border, and extending the lives of coal-fired power plants.
“It’s been a hugely historic week,” Speaker Mike Johnson declared in the midst of all those votes.
But it felt more like a college student feverishly writing his thesis the night before it was due than an earnest effort to pass sustainable legislation destined for the president’s desk. This is a Congress where movement often gets confused for progress.
It’s hard to imagine any of those measures—all passed largely along party lines—going anywhere in the Senate, where Democratic buy-in is a prerequisite as long as Republicans ignore President Trump’s requests to tank the filibuster.
Yes, there are elements and themes here that enjoy bipartisan support, notably permitting reform, where liberal Democrats such as Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse agree there’s far too much bureaucracy and opaqueness in the system. Health care, including a push to expand insurance options for small businesses and limit the reach of pharmacy-benefit managers, is another fertile area. Yet the GOP bills passed last week to tackle those issues are wrapped in partisan vehicles that figure to run out of gas in the upper chamber.
Hot-button issues such as climate change and gender politics are even less likely to make it through the Senate, especially in a midterm year, when political agendas often conspire to thwart bipartisan compromise.
It probably doesn’t help the cause of legislation to have a president who views Congress more as an appendix than a vital organ—and has the executive orders to show for it.
Congress passed more legislation in 2025 (with one party in control of all levers) than it did in 2024 (when power was shared). There were 34 bills signed into law this year as of Sunday, according to my colleague Jeff Dufour (not including resolutions of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act and other resolutions). But doing more this year is a low bar considering the last year of Joe Biden’s term was generally viewed as one of the least productive sessions in modern history.
This year’s wins included the One Big Beautiful Bill Trump championed and signed in July, which encompassed a smorgasbord of GOP priorities such as tax cuts, reforms to safety-net programs, the creation of Trump Accounts for newborns, and funding for the “Golden Dome” missile-defense system. The thin list of congressional accomplishments also includes the National Defense Authorization Act, the yearly must-pass bill that authorizes Pentagon spending and policies.
Beyond that, the first year of this Congress will be known for the 43-day government shutdown, the longest in history; for lawmakers' inability to reach agreement on extending Obamacare subsidies, which are expiring for millions of Americans who have already received notices about skyrocketing premium costs; and for the reluctant release of the Jeffrey Epstein files only after rank-and-file members, via a discharge petition, forced a floor vote over GOP leaders’ long-standing objections.
The question is whether passing a flurry of partisan-laced measures in the last days of this year will mean much come January.
