The average floor time spent on discussion is 11 minutes.
(Rick Egan | The Salt Lake Tribune) Lawmakers work late on Friday, March 1, 2024, the last night of Congress. BYU professors crunched a lot of numbers for this year’s Congress.
Adam Brown, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, compiles a trove of statistics that tell a glimpse of the history of how laws are made at the end of each Congressional session.
Here are the key takeaways from Brown’s 2024 session analysis:
so many bills
Lawmakers introduced a record number of bills this Congress (934 bills were numbered) and passed a record number of 591 bills. The pass rate of 63% is about the average for the past 10 years.
stir and burn
The House of Representatives spent 84 hours debating these bills. This includes time to debate bills that are ultimately rejected. The Senate spent 77 hours passing these bills. That means the median time spent debating the bill was a total of 11 minutes in both chambers, according to Brown. This is actually an increase from last year, when the median bill was just 9 minutes, but it’s still behind compared to recent years.
Even more time was spent on a few bills. HB261, which would eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities and public schools, received 138 minutes of floor debate.
Bipartisan positions are preferred… usually
While there are certainly bills that divide Congress along partisan lines, they are rare. Most have broad bipartisan support. Approximately 1 in 8 votes in the House and 1 in 10 votes in the Senate are decided along party lines.
With Republicans holding supermajorities in both chambers, they passed nearly 70% of the bills they introduced. Democrats did slightly better than last year, passing nearly 40% of the bills they introduced, but this number remains the second-lowest passage rate since 2010. Democratic senators performed significantly better than House members in passing legislation.
versatile policy maker
Some Utah lawmakers argue that the state already has enough laws in place, but consider passing most bills a dubious distinction. This year, the candidate with the most votes was Sen. Wayne Harper (R-Taylorsville) with 25 votes. This was followed by Sen. Lincoln Fillmore (R-South Jordan) with 21 votes and Sen. Kurt Bramble (R-Provo) with 19 votes. Harper’s mark this year is down slightly from the 28 points he scored in the previous session. Six members, including two Democrats and four Republicans, failed to pass their sponsored bill this Congress.
There are not many naysayers
Sen. Dan McKay (R-Riverton) was at one point nicknamed Dan McKay “Nye” because he voted against so many bills. This year, he’s nowhere near the top of the list. The credit goes to Rep. Brett Garner, D-West Valley City, who voted against the measure 14% of the time. He polled just three times as many votes as his gubernatorial candidate, Rep. Phil Lyman (R). (Senator McNay cast more than 3% of the vote.)
