Was the 113th Congress, the distinguished body which will be replaced in January, the least productive Congress?
Apparently it was on track toward going down as the least productive Congress, but that title was narrowly avoided during the lame duck session according to the Pew Research Center.
In all, the expiring Congress enacted 296 laws, 13 more than the 2011-12 Congress. Of those, we categorized 212 as substantive by our deliberately generous criteria (that is, anything besides building renamings, commemorative-coin issuances and other purely ceremonial laws); that was four more than the previous Congress. […]
One might not have predicted such a finish. When Congress broke for its election recess, it had passed just 185 laws, putting it on pace to be the least-productive in recent history.
To put this another way: of all the laws passed by Congress over the last two years, nearly 40 percent (37.5) were passed during the last month.
The 112th Congress still holds the title for least productive.
