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Given the extremely aggressive and ambitious nature of the second Trump administration and the abject submissiveness of Republicans in Congress to the president’s every whim, you’d think the early phases of Trump 2.0 would have been a whirlwind of legislative activity. It’s been anything but that, actually.
In the first 100 days of Trump’s presidency, he will have signed only five bills into law (the actual date is April 30, but Congress just left D.C. for a two-week recess, so no more bills are headed his way). That means in his second term, Trump will have enacted fewer laws than anyone dating back to Dwight D. Eisenhower, as Punchbowl News reports:
By this point in 2017, Trump had signed 24 bills into law.
By this point in Biden’s presidency, he’d signed seven bills into law.
In 2009, Barack Obama had signed 11 bills into law by now.
In 2001, George W. Bush had signed seven bills into law.
In 1993, Bill Clinton had signed 21 bills into law.
At this point in 1989, George H.W. Bush had signed 13 bills into law.
In 1981, Ronald Reagan had signed nine bills into law by now.
Jimmy Carter had signed 19 bills into law by now in 1977.
Richard Nixon had signed eight bills into law by this time in 1969.
John F. Kennedy signed 20 bills into law by the end of March 1961.
Dwight D. Eisenhower had also signed 20 bills into law by this time in 1953.
One reason for this low level of legislative activity is that Trump’s party can use a legislative device that was not available to Ike, JFK, or Nixon (or even Carter, in the way it’s used now): the budget reconciliation process, whereby a party controlling both Houses and Congress and the presidency can package massive batches of legislation to be enacted on up-or-down votes without the possibility of a Senate filibuster. But every president taking office since 1993 has had reconciliation available, along with the governing trifecta necessary to use it.
So by any standard, including the one he set in 2017, Trump’s low level of congressional activity in 2025 is remarkable. It’s not like he’s facing any sort of real obstruction in Congress. Yes, House Republicans have a famously narrow margin of control. But any time Trump has been willing to go to the mats (notably on the stopgap spending measure and on congressional budget resolutions — which aren’t treated as “bills,” since the president doesn’t sign them), the votes have been there. So you have to conclude that the extremely low congressional productivity is deliberate.
Without question, one key explanation is that Trump prefers to expand executive authority to the absolute maximum extent the federal courts will allow instead of working through Congress to implement his agenda. That’s why the the record-low number of bills reaching his desk has been matched by a record-high number of executive orders (124 so far, along with 33 memoranda and another 33 proclamations). And that covers only formal assertions of presidential authority: More informally, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has undertaken a blizzard of actions that arguably usurp Congress’s authority over federal programs and personnel, while others were initiated by individual agencies operating under an extremely broad interpretation of presidential powers.
If the courts do significantly restrain the administration’s efforts to expand executive-branch powers (along with the president’s personal power to run executive-branch agencies as he wishes despite congressional mandates to the contrary) to the breaking point, you could see a return later in 2025 to more regular use of legislation to achieve Trump’s goals.
There is, in fact, one policy-making avenue in which it appears the White House has decided to utilize Congress rather than a constitutionally dubious unilateral executive action: cuts in current-year federal spending. For years now, OMB director Russell Vought has been a loud advocate for aggressive use of presidential impoundment powers, which basically means refusal to spend dollars appropriated by Congress in bills previously signed by the president. During the Nixon administration, these powers were significantly reined in by the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which Vought argues was an unconstitutional abrogation of the president’s inherent authority to maintain fiscal discipline and manage the federal government. Some of the early Trump administration power grabs involving federal agencies may amount to efforts to test judicial tolerance for impoundments, since they rest on presidential orders rather than any delegation of congressional authority.
But there are multiple reports that, going forward, OMB will try to claw back current-year spending by the ICA-authorized method of proposing rescissions that Congress must approve within 45 days. Politico reports that a $9 billion package of rescissions will be unveiled toward the end of the month, probably in conjunction with the release of the president’s formal budget for the fiscal year 2026:
The White House will soon ask Congress to cancel $9.3 billion already approved for foreign aid initiatives, public broadcasting and other programs, according to a White House official granted anonymity to speak freely.
Congress is expected to receive that so-called rescissions request when lawmakers return from their two-week recess later this month. To nix the funding, the House and Senate will each have to vote at a simple-majority threshold to approve the formal ask.
The White House package is expected to target funding for the State Department, U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S. Institute of Peace and other programs, along with assistance to PBS and NPR through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The USAID cuts would retroactively put a congressional stamp of approval on earlier DOGE measures. And of course, the White House is free to propose additional rescissions whenever it wants. Like a reconciliation bill, rescissions cannot be filibustered. But it’s worth noting that during the first Trump administration, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected a $15 billion rescission package. So this could be another early test of congressional subservience to the MAGA regime. If Congress flunks the test, the White House can always go back to doing everything on its own.
