Reality Check: Republican Control of the House and Senate Doesn't Equal Tons of Progress Necessarily

Since achieving Election Day success, Republicans have continually promised to use their heightened power to pass hundreds of previously “stuck in the Senate” bills. However, history shows and experts agree that the House typically passes more legislation than the Senate, and to have 300-plus bill languish in the Senate is more common than unusual.

This past weekend, former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said, “I think you ought to take a look at history over the last couple of years. The House was extremely productive in passing legislation, and as we all know, bills just started to stack up in the Senate!”

It turns out this comment is part of a larger messaging strategy that Republicans have been using for months now. The current House Majority Leader, Kevin McCarthy of California, maintains a list on his government website of the 387 bills "Stuck in the Senate."

But NBC Bay Area reviewed a number of the listed bills and found that many, but not all, of them were not of any serious importance. Examples include legislation to protect commemorative coins as well as American battlefields from the Civil War, just to name two.

FactCheck.org did an exhaustive review and found that 31 of the bills were focused on naming or re-naming post offices and other federal buildings.

"There are a lot of different kinds of legislation that have been stuck in the Senate - some of them are certainly substantive. And the substantive ones are actually quite important, whether it's issues around jumpstarting economic growth through the Keystone Pipeline, is one example,” said Lanhee Chen, a Research Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution and a seasoned political advisor. "And then there are probably others that are less significant. Naming post offices, battlefields, etc...”

And according to the Washington Post, of the last 20 Congresses, 11 had 300-plus House-passed bills that never were considered by the Senate, under both Democratic and Republican leadership.

That hasn’t stopped Republicans from blaming ousted Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for the 378 bills stuck in the Senate. And, according to Chen, Reid isn’t entirely free from blame.

“Part of it is the inaction, which may not be unusual. But part of it is the tone, and the nature and the way in which the Senate has been run,” Chen said. “And I think people attribute that to Harry Reid, whether fairly or not. He was the Majority Leader, and so he bears some responsibility for the tone of the discussion."

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