Rep. Eric Swalwell blasts GOP over Congress productivity record low output

A California lawmaker leaving office to pursue his gubernatorial bid blasted congressional Republicans for one of the least productive sessions of Congress — a record Republicans say Democrats have an equal hand in creating.

Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, who hopes to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom as California’s top executive, said the weak 2025 legislative outcome was due to a lack of focus and a lack of bipartisan effort.

“There hasn’t been much else that’s been done in this Congress. And so, as we head into the new year, if Republicans want to work with us to reduce costs, reduce what we spend at the grocery store, they’ll find partners in us,” Swalwell told The Weekend.

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Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, was mocked on X after posting a video of himself lifting weights while trashing Republicans. (John Lamparski/Getty Images)

“Now I will say that I am responsible for one of the 40 bills that passed. It was a bipartisan bill to make it easier for breastfeeding mothers to travel through airports and not have their breast milk checked,” Swalwell said, touting a bill he authored.

According to congressional records, the House of Representatives received 362 votes in the first session of the 119th Congress. For comparison, during another Republican three-way in 2015, the House considered 710 measures in the same window.

This year, 61 bills have cleared both houses of Congress to become law. Of these, only thirty-eight were anything other than a congressional resolution.

Despite Swalwell’s criticism, Republicans looking at the productivity picture say complaints about productivity cut both ways.

Sen. Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, on Sunday accused Democrats of creating gridlock on issues such as government spending to deliberately impede Republican productivity.

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Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is seen Tuesday, July 11, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

“The American public is a pawn in this dysfunction. But again, understand the Democrats, they want the shutdown,” Johnson said on Sunday Morning Features, referring to the record 43-day shutdown impasse earlier this year. “They are responsible for this because they don’t want President Trump and the Republicans to succeed.”

“So if the U.S. economy is collateral damage, they don’t care because they just want power. They want to be back in power in November,” Johnson added.

Even though lawmakers have already left Washington and won’t return until 2026, Congress has a series of priorities that remain on the agenda. Among them, the government will need to find a way to pass a spending bill before the end of January or risk another government shutdown.

More urgently, Congress must also decide whether it will extend increased subsidies for Obamacare, which was passed as an emergency response to COVID-19.

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Rep. Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, accuses a top housing official of extracting Democrats’ private mortgage records and using them to trigger federal criminal investigations, according to a lawsuit filed Nov. 25. (Getty Images)

Without some sort of extension, Democrats fear that the vast majority of Obamacare’s 24 million members will experience a sudden spike in premium costs when the subsidies expire at the end of the year.

Last month, a handful of Republicans broke with their party’s majority and voted with Democrats to launch consideration of an extension of the subsidies in January. Swalwell believes the vote offers the possibility of bipartisan cooperation in 2026, absent in 2025.

“The current mandate, the majority of the House of Representatives wants to put these subsidies in place so Americans can pay less for health care. So it’s now up to the president, when we reconvene in a few days, to put this plan up for a vote,” Swalwell said.

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“But otherwise, the message in the midterms will be: It costs too much. It also costs in terms of what we pay at the grocery store and, figuratively speaking, it costs too much in terms of the fights we are losing under this administration.”