Congress heading home to campaign

WASHINGTON - Congress heads home this weekend leaving a slew of unfinished business waiting until after the November elections for a lame-duck session and doing little to improve this Congress' reputation as one of the least productive ever.

If lawmakers are campaigning on what they've accomplished on Capitol Hill over the last two years, it's likely to be a short conversation with prospective voters, critics say.

The 113th Congress passed only slightly more than 163 bills that became law in the first 620 days of the two-year session. That's down from the 173 for the 112th Congress and 237 by the 111th Congress over the same time frame, according to GovTrack.us, which monitors congressional legislative activity.

This Congress' production pace is making the 80th Congress, blasted by President Harry S. Truman in 1947 and 1948 as the "Do Nothing Congress," look downright prolific. That Congress passed 395 bills in its first year and 511 in its second.

The decline in quantity of passed bills in the 113th is accompanied by a lack of quality. A July study by the Pew Research Center found that Congress had passed 108 substantive bills - items that weren't post office namings, commemorations, or purely ceremonial - by the end of that month.

That was two fewer than the previous Congress over an equivalent period but 35 fewer than the 111th Congress (2009-10) over the same period.

The Congress can claim some victories. In addition to a series of short-term budget bills, it reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, revised some of the nation's farm subsidy and nutrition assistance rules under the Agriculture Act, and increased the Food and Drug Administration's authority over compounding pharmacies under the Drug Quality and Security Act.

But it once again failed to agree on a long-term budget - part of its constitutional responsibility - and once again funded the government through a short-term Continuing Resolution.