Legislative Productivity Quotes

Contrary to the narrative that Congress is racked by an inability to pass bills, the number of laws in our country has simply exploded. Less than 100 years ago, all of the federal government’s statutes fit into a single volume. By 2018, the U.S. Code encompassed 54 volumes and approximately 60,000 pages. Over the past decade, Congress has adopted an average of 344 new pieces of legislation each session. That amounts to 2 million to 3 million words of new federal law each year. Even the length of bills has grown—from an average of about two pages in the 1950s to 18 today.

The Knesset is the parliament that passes the most laws in the world. It's a disaster for the business sector.

We already spend too few days in Congress working on meaningful legislation; we simply can't afford to waste more time on legislation that doesn't move the needle to improve the lives of everyday Americans.

Latin American legislatures have probably passed more laws over the past 175 years than their counterparts anywhere on the planet. Yet never have so many laws been ignored by so many for so long

Reform is not for the short-winded. I'm committed to making sure the Senate is more than just a graveyard for good ideas.

The 112th Congress passed only 220 laws, the lowest number enacted by any Congress. In 1948, when President Truman called the 80th Congress a 'Do-Nothing' Congress, it had passed more than 900 laws.

You need to look at Congress as having a certain capacity. Now, the capacity varies from year to year and from body to body, but there is a finite amount of things that Congress can attentively do.

The most important consideration I have is I want my legislative shop to have a functional office suite that is conducive to getting their work accomplished.

Members of Congress are never in town any more. They’re so busy raising money that they leave Thursday night and don’t return till Monday night. Tuesday through Thursday are now long days, so there is no time anymore for bipartisan socialization.

Pat Moynihan wrote more books than most of his colleagues in the senate ever read.

In the first two years, when I had a strong majority in the House and the Senate, we were as productive as any administration has been since the '60s. I mean, we got a lot done.