Most members of the Republican-led House did show up for work this week, tackling weighty tasks such as denouncing socialism and launching a failed effort to amend the Constitution to keep the number of Supreme Court justices at nine.
That said, there’s still some time for the chamber’s GOP majority to at least try to get real work done ahead of the midterm elections, theoretically giving members something to brag about before voters cast their ballots. According to the official schedule released as 2026 got underway, the House will be out the week of Labor Day, but it was scheduled to be in session for the three weeks that followed.
At least, that was the plan. Roll Call reported:
House Republicans are scrapping the last two weeks the chamber was scheduled to be in session before the midterm elections.
Under the revised schedule announced Thursday, the House will return for votes the evening of Monday, Sept. 14, a week after Labor Day, for what is now expected to be only a one-week session before members return to their home districts.
In other words, between now and Election Day, the House was supposed to be in session for three more weeks. That has now been reduced to just one four-day week, to be followed by some possible work after the elections.
At a Capitol Hill press conference this week, House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain boasted, “This has been the most aggressive and productive Congress since Speaker Joseph Martin’s 80th Congress in 1949.” At the same event, House Speaker Mike Johnson similarly added, “This has literally been the most productive, successful and aggressive Congress since 1949 — and I think it’s in the top five of all time.”
The references to the 80th Congress in the late 1940s were curious: This was the same Congress that was famously condemned by Harry Truman as the “Do-Nothing Congress.”
In fact, Republicans lost 75 House seats and nine Senate seats in the 1948 elections. The Bulwark noted this week, “It’s kind of amazing that the Republican leadership in the 119th Congress wants to compare itself to the 80th Congress. Democrats should certainly thank them for doing so.” (Also note, the “Do-Nothing Congress” of the era featured a Republican majority serving alongside a Democratic president. The current “Do-Nothing Congress” features GOP control over all levers of federal power.)
But the GOP leaders’ use of the word “aggressive” this week also stood out because it suggests the Republican-led chamber has been hard at work for the past 20 or so months, tackling the public’s business and delivering real results.
But that doesn’t describe the recent past at all. Punchbowl News noted earlier this week that 244 days into 2026, the House has held votes on just 65 days, a track record that’s now poised to look worse as GOP leaders give members even more time off.
As for Republicans’ increasingly absurd claims about congressional productivity, NOTUS’ Dana Milbank noted in his latest column that the official congressional data shows that the current Congress “is indeed on pace to set a record — as the least productive Congress in modern history. With just 104 pieces of legislation enacted into law so far, it is poised to take the crown from … well, from the last Congress, which Johnson also led, when just 274 pieces of legislation became law.”
GOP leaders could roll up their sleeves and try to deliver some results in the run-up to the midterms, but as they made clear on Thursday morning, they no longer intend to try.
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