Analysis · October 21, 2026

From introduction to law: how few bills make it

Of more than 16,000 bills written by current members this Congress, fewer than 1 in 100 became law. A look at where bills stop, and why the report card gives points for each step.

Introducing a bill is easy. Any member of Congress can do it on any day the chamber is in session, and there is no limit on how many bills one member can introduce. Getting a bill through committee, through both chambers and signed by the President is something else entirely. The numbers from the 119th Congress show just how steep that path is.

The funnel in numbers

Current members have sponsored 16,284 bills and joint resolutions in this Congress. Congress Report Card sorts each one by the furthest stage it has reached, based on its latest recorded action on Congress.gov.

Nearly nine in ten bills never move after they are introduced. They are referred to a committee and stay there. Of the bills that do move, many stop after committee action or after passing one chamber. Fewer than one bill in a hundred becomes law.

Why so many bills stall

That low rate isn't a sign that Congress is broken, or at least not only that. Bills are introduced for many reasons besides becoming law:

• To stake out a position. A bill puts a member's idea on the record and gives them something concrete to point to with voters, advocates and colleagues.
• To start a conversation. Many ideas take several Congresses to build support. A bill introduced now may be the draft for one that passes years later.
• To be folded into something bigger. Much legislation becomes law as part of a large package, such as the annual defense authorization, an appropriations bill or a reconciliation bill. When that happens, the original bill stays "introduced" in the record, and the package's sponsor gets the credit.
• To respond to a constituent or event. Members often introduce narrow bills to address a problem in their district or state, knowing they may not get floor time.

Committees are the main filter. Each chamber sends every bill to one or more committees, and committee chairs decide which ones get a hearing or a markup. Most do not. Floor time is the second filter: the House Rules Committee and the Senate majority leader decide what reaches the floor, and both chambers have far more bills than time.

The House passes more; the Senate finishes more

The table shows an interesting difference between the chambers. House bills are about twice as likely as Senate bills to pass their own chamber (5.1% against 2.6%). The House runs under rules that let the majority move bills quickly, and it passes many uncontroversial bills under a fast-track procedure called "suspension of the rules," which needs a two-thirds vote but allows only limited debate.

Senate bills, on the other hand, are slightly more likely to become law once they pass. The Senate's procedures make floor time scarce, so a Senate bill that passes has often already been negotiated with the House. Many House bills that pass the House are never taken up in the Senate at all. Of the House bills that passed at least one chamber, about one in eight has become law; for Senate bills the figure is about one in four.

How the report card scores each stage

Because so few bills become law, counting only laws would give most members a score of zero and tell readers very little. Counting only introductions would reward members who file many bills that go nowhere. Congress Report Card does something in between. Each sponsored bill earns points for the furthest stage it reached:

A member's point total is then ranked against the rest of their chamber, which gives the "bills written" score. A law is worth ten introductions, so a member who sponsors a handful of bills that move can outscore one who files dozens that don't. But volume still counts, because introducing bills is a real part of legislative work.

The point values are a judgment call. They were chosen so that each step is worth noticeably more than the one before it, without letting a single law swamp everything else. You can see how a member's bills break down by stage on their report card, which shows four boxes with the count at each stage.

Who moves the most bills

In the House, 279 of the 433 voting members have sponsored at least one bill that passed the House or became law. Only 65 have sponsored a bill that became law. In the Senate, 68 senators have had a bill pass at least one chamber and 32 have sponsored a law.

Members of the majority party have a clear advantage. In the House, 17.9% of bills sponsored by Republicans moved past introduction, compared with 5.4% of bills sponsored by Democrats. In the Senate the gap is smaller: 13.2% for Republicans and 8.1% for Democrats. Committee chairs, who are all from the majority, are especially well placed to move their own bills. Because the report card ranks members within their chamber rather than within their party, minority members' bill scores tend to be lower, and that is worth keeping in mind when comparing members of different parties. The article on Democrats and Republicans goes into more detail.

Reading a member's bill record

When you look at a member's report card, the stage boxes tell you more than the total. A member with 30 bills, all still at "introduced," has a very different record from one with 10 bills, three of which passed the House. The list of "bills that advanced" on each report card links to Congress.gov, where you can read each bill and follow its full history. For the list of everything that became law, see Every bill that became law, by subject.

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.