Vanity: FReeper research requested: How many bills are passed by Congress in a typical session?

Vanity | 8/19/02 | Willie Green

[Willie Green]

Please forgive the vanity.

I posted the above chart on another thread, and FReeper "Phantom Lord" said "I would like to see a similar chart that shows how many bills congress sent to the presidents desks for their signature and got it."

I did some searching on the Web, and I'm afraid I just couldn't come up with any information to answer this question. It really made me curious: How many bills DOES Congress pass in a typical session?

My guess is that it must be some mind-boggling number that they want to keep hushed-up out of sheer embarrassment.

[Willie Green]

bump FYI

(Dang! I don't know why the table messed-up
I used the same cut & paste HTML I used in the other thread and it came out OK.)

[Chad Fairbanks]

42?

Bttt...

[Phantom Lord]

With the number of federal laws it has to be a staggering number. Though it could be a small number (relatively) and each bill could be loaded up with hundreds to thousands of items. After all, how many damn "riders" and other things are added to bills that have nothing to do with the original bill.

[hoot2]

"How many bills DOES Congress pass in a typical session? "

legally, or illegally?

[Ken H]

There was a thread that dealt with this a while back, about two months ago if I'm not mistaken.

I think the number was something like 4000, although that figure may represent both laws passed and new Federal regulations imposed by bureaucrat agencies.

[Phantom Lord]

what I was looking for whan I asked Willie the question was the number of bills passed by congress that reach the presidents desk for his signature, thus making it law.

I suspect that most of what gets put into place today is done by the bureaucrats through regulations.

But it is a question worth finding the answer too. How many bills does congress send to the president a year?

[JZoback]

How many bills are passed by Congress in a typical session?

If the answer is more than "0", it's one to many

Except for constitutional mandated duties, of course

[RedBloodedAmerican]

How many? As many as they need to. Don't you think it varies?

http://capwiz.com/govexec/issues/bills/

[Senator Pardek]

Press here. All of the bills were passed into law.

[socal_parrot]

Here's a scary fact I found while trying to find an answer for you.

"Of 44,195 bills passed by Congress in over 200 years, only 3,163 were passed in its first 50 years and 41 percent were passed in the last 50 years. "

[Willie Green]

I think the number was something like 4000, although that figure may represent both laws passed and new Federal regulations imposed by bureaucrat agencies.

Phantom Lord and I aren't talking about the regulations imposed by the various bureacratic agencies. Just the number of Bills passed by Congress and sent to the President for signing. It would be helpful for "completing" the table and aid in calculating what percentage of the bills are vetoed.

I suppose if one wanted to get fanatical about data, one could also include a column for all the bills that are introduced in Congress. But a lot of bills die in committee, or aren't passed, or don't make it to the President for some other reason.

But the number of bills that the President actually signs seems like a fairly simple, straightforward question.

[Ken H]

FYI, I flagged you guys to the thread about Federal regulations.

There were 4313 new regulations in 2000, but only 4132 in 2001. We are making tremendous progress!

[Dakmar]

"Of 44,195 bills passed by Congress in over 200 years, only 3,163 were passed in its first 50 years and 41 percent were passed in the last 50 years. "

Go back to 1933 or so and the number of bills passed by Congress rises dramatically. Every third generation or so seems to be able to drastically mess-up the Constitution with its amendnents. The last was Nixon's 18 year olds voting thing. The next one will probably guarantee the voting rights of at risk youth who insist on flaunting their ill-fitting underwear as some sort of fashion statement.

[Willie Green]

Just as I thought!
There are a lot of bills entitled "Declaring February 31st of this year as 'National Eat-A-Banana Day', and for other nefarious purposes"

No wonder they make this info hard to find!

[Dakmar]

Sounds like we're going backwards. I thought we were paying these people to write new laws, and now you tell me they are slacking off? Unaceptable, my friend, completely unaceptable. We should appoint some sort of citizens oversight commitee to make sure these slackers work day and night on creating new legislation.

[Dakmar]

163. H.R.2577 : To designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 310 South State Street in St. Ignace, Michigan, as the "Bob Davis Post Office Building".
Sponsor: Rep Stupak, Bart- Latest Major Action: 4/18/2002 Became Public Law No: 107-163.
Committees: House Government Reform; Senate Governmental Affairs

I know I'll sleep better tonight knowing someone is looking out for my safety.

[Willie Green]

"Of 44,195 bills passed by Congress in over 200 years, only 3,163 were passed in its first 50 years and 41 percent were passed in the last 50 years. "

Well that would be an average of about 221 per year.
The link provided by Senator Pardek seems to indicate a recent range of roughly 150 to 350 per year. (300 to 700 per 2-year Congressional session.)

I guess that gets us in the ballpark, anyway.

Actually, I'm surprised the numbers are that low.
I suppose that's because they often lump a lot of different things together in one bill.
Can't just go by the bill's title to know what it really does.

Thanks for the help!!!

[mrsmith]

Some recent info from NARA :
104th congress: 333 public laws, 4 private laws.
105th congress: 394 public laws, 10 private laws.
106th congress: 580 public laws, 24 private laws.
107th congress (so far): 209 public laws, 1 private law.

These are the ones signed by the president, and not vetoed or pocket vetoed.

[Ken H]

The 16th and 17th Amendments, both ratified in 1913, are the ones that have corroded the Republic, IMO.

I'd like to see three Amendments ratified:

1. The sixteenth article of amendment to the US Constitution is repealed.
2. The seventeenth article of amendment to the US Constitution is repealed.
3. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor forbidden by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.