Analysis · October 21, 2026

The 119th Congress by the numbers

539 members, 1,589 roll-call votes, more than 16,000 bills and 126 new laws: an overview of what the public record of the current Congress shows.

The 119th Congress began on January 3, 2025, and it ends on January 3, 2027. With the midterm elections days away, most of its record is now written. This article looks at the whole Congress at once: how many votes were held, how many bills were written, how many became law and how the 539 current members' grades are spread out.

Who is being graded

Congress Report Card grades every current member: 100 senators, 433 voting representatives and the six non-voting delegates who represent the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. That makes 539 report cards. Eight of those members took office partway through the Congress, after a death, resignation or appointment, and their report cards carry a partial term label because they have a shorter record to judge.

Republicans hold the majority in both chambers. In the House there are 221 Republicans, 217 Democrats and one independent among the members graded here, counting the delegates. The Senate has 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats and two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Votes held

So far the House has held 674 roll-call votes in this Congress and the Senate has held 915. A roll-call vote is one where each member's yes or no is recorded by name. Many decisions in Congress are made by voice vote or unanimous consent instead, and those leave no individual record, so they can't be counted for or against anyone.

The Senate held more roll calls than the House largely because so much of its floor time goes to confirming the President's nominees. Every cabinet secretary, federal judge and ambassador needs Senate confirmation, and many of those confirmations get a recorded vote.

Attendance is high in both chambers. The typical House member, excluding delegates and those who arrived partway through, voted on 98.1% of the roll calls they were eligible for. The typical senator voted on 97.9%. Most members miss a handful of votes; a small group misses a lot. Seven voting House members missed more than 15% of their votes, the point where the attendance score reaches zero, and one senator came within a fraction of a point of it. You can read more in House members who miss the most votes and Senators who miss the most votes.

Bills written

Current House members have sponsored 10,909 bills and joint resolutions in this Congress, and current senators have sponsored 5,375. Those are the two kinds of measure that can become law. Members also introduced thousands of simple resolutions, which do things like honor a sports team or set the chamber's own rules. Simple resolutions can't become law, so they are left out of the grades.

Very few bills get anywhere. Of the House bills, 88% never moved past introduction. About 6% saw some committee action, 5% passed at least one chamber and fewer than 1% became law. The Senate's numbers are similar. Taken together, 126 bills and joint resolutions sponsored by current members have become law in this Congress. That includes the reconciliation bill passed in 2025, the appropriations bills that funded the government, and 24 resolutions that overturned recent federal regulations. Every bill that became law lists them by subject.

Cosponsoring is far more common than sponsoring. A typical House member has sponsored about 22 bills and cosponsored about 257 more. In the Senate the typical member has sponsored about 51 and cosponsored about 146. Cosponsorship totals vary a great deal, from a handful to more than a thousand. What cosponsoring a bill means explains why.

How the grades are spread out

Each member's grade is a weighted average of three scores: vote attendance (40%), bills written (35%) and bills supported (25%). The two bill scores rank each member against the rest of their own chamber, so a C means about average and the scale is the same for senators and representatives.

The median score across all 539 members is 79, a C+. The middle of the distribution is crowded: more than 70% of members fall somewhere in the B or C range. That is by design. Because bill activity is ranked within each chamber, most members end up near the middle, and the grades that stand out are the ones at either end.

The highest score in the House belongs to Joe Neguse of Colorado at 98.7, and the highest in the Senate to Rick Scott of Florida at 97.5. Both have near-perfect attendance and are among the most active bill writers in their chambers. At the other end, almost every F comes from missed votes. Members who miss more than about one vote in ten lose most or all of their attendance score, and that 40% weight is hard to make up with bill activity alone. What A students have in common looks at the pattern more closely.

What the grades leave out

A report card built only from the public record has limits, and it's worth stating them plainly. Committee work, oversight hearings, negotiations, constituent services and leadership duties don't show up in vote attendance or bill counts. Party leaders in particular tend to score lower than their influence would suggest, because their job is to manage the floor rather than to write bills; see Why party leaders score low on bills. The grades also say nothing about whether a vote was right or a bill was good. They measure participation and legislative output, not ideology.

Within those limits, the numbers are consistent and checkable. Every figure on the site comes from Voteview's roll-call records and Congress.gov's legislative data, and the same rules apply to every member regardless of party. The methodology page explains each step, and the state pages show how each delegation compares.

What to watch for the rest of the term

The 119th Congress still has a lame-duck session after the election, and lame-duck sessions often produce a burst of legislation, especially spending bills and measures that have been waiting for floor time. Bills that pass in those final weeks will move members' bill scores. Attendance can also slip in the run-up to an election, when members spend more time campaigning at home. The weekly digest tracks those changes as they happen.

Figures are from the Congress Report Card data as of October 21, 2026. Grades change as Congress votes, so the numbers on member pages may have moved since. How grades are calculated.