evidence: Congress wasn't very productive in 2023. Here are the 27 bills it passed It was a very newsy year for Congress, but lawmakers did not manage to pass much legislation. Only 27 bills passed through both chambers. [...] MCDANIEL: No, basically not. I mean, there were only 27 bills passed through both chambers in the first year of this Congress, including three crisis bills, I guess I'd call them. These are the big ones, two short-term extensions of funding to keep the government open and one to raise the U.S. government's borrowing limit - you may have heard it called the debt ceiling - essentially so the government could pay the credit card bills for the money Congress had already directed it to spend. So these are must-do stuff. But other than that, I mean, they named some Veterans Affairs clinics. They commissioned a commemorative coin for the 250th anniversary of the Marine Corps and not much else - way behind even previous years of divided government.