Congress is on pace to make history with the least productive legislative year in the post World War II era. 
 
 Just 61 bills have become law to date in 2012 out of 3,914 bills that have been introduced by lawmakers, or less than 2% of all proposed laws, according to a USA TODAY analysis of records since 1947 kept by the U.S. House Clerk's office. 
 
 In 2011, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House, Congress passed just 90 bills into law. The only other year in which Congress failed to pass at least 125 laws was 1995. 
 
 These statistics make the 112th Congress, covering 2011-12, the least productive two-year gathering on Capitol Hill since the end of World War II. Not even the 80th Congress, which President Truman called the "do-nothing Congress" in 1948, passed as few laws as the current one, records show. 
 
 The difference between 1995 and now is that Republicans rebounded in the second year of the 104th Congress in 1996, churning out 245 laws with a Democratic president, including a tax cut package, a minimum wage increase, an overhaul of the nation's welfare system, and requiring law enforcement to disclose where sex offenders live. 
 
 Doug Heye, a spokesman for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., defended the chamber, citing over 30 economic measures the House has passed that have fizzled in the Democratic-run Senate "at the behest of a president who is presiding over the worst economic recovery in history." 
 
 Unproductive Congress Fewer laws have been passed by this Congress than by any other in the last 65 years. Number of laws passed each year by Congress since 1947: 
 
 
 
 2012: 61; 2011: 90; 2010: 258; 2009: 125; 2008: 280; 2007: 180; 2006: 313; 2005: 169; 2004: 300; 2003: 198; 2002: 241; 2001: 136; 2000: 410; 1999: 170; 1998: 241; 1997: 153; 1996: 245; 1995: 88; 1994: 255; 1993: 210; 1992: 347; 1991: 243; 1990: 410; 1989: 240; 1988: 473; 1987: 240; 1986: 424; 1985: 240; 1984: 408; 1983: 215; 1982: 328; 1981: 145; 1980: 426; 1979: 187; 1978: 411; 1977: 223; 1976: 383; 1975: 205; 1974: 404; 1973: 245; 1972: 383; 1971: 224; 1970: 505; 1969: 190; 1968: 391; 1967: 391; 1966: 461; 1965: 349; 1964: 408; 1963: 258; 1962: 484; 1961: 401; 1960: 417; 1959: 383; 1958: 620; 1957: 316; 1956: 638; 1955: 390; 1954: 492; 1953: 288; 1952: 339; 1951: 255; 1950: 481; 1949: 440; 1948: 511; 1947: 395 
 
 
 
 Source: House Clerk's Office 
 
 When Democrats controlled both chambers during the 111th Congress, 258 laws were enacted in 2010 and 125 in 2009, including President Obama's health care law. 
 
 The 112th Congress will conclude after Election Day following an anticipated lame duck session. It has been defined by partisan divisions and legislative failures, including a bipartisan "Super Committee" that failed to enact $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction. 
 
 Issues on which the divided Congress has not found consensus include the Dec. 31 expiration of the Bush tax cuts and a budget plan to replace $109 billion in automatic spending cuts, a drought-relief plan passed by the House but not the Senate, the extension of the Senate-passed federal farm bill that is languishing in the House and a bill to overhaul the U.S. Postal Service. 
 
 The inertia continues to fuel Congress' historically low approval ratings, which hit 10% Tuesday, according to Gallup polling. ||||| On January 3rd, the 112th Congress of the United States of America finally ends. Thank God. 
 
 To properly evaluate the 112th, consider the record of its predecessor, the 111th Congress, which ran from January 2009 to January 2011. The fighting 111th passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (better known as the “stimulus”), the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), and the Dodd-Frank financial reforms. It passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and expanded both the Serve America Act for community service and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. It created significant new anti-tobacco regulations, ratified the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty, ended “don’t ask, don’t tell” in the armed forces and agreed to the 2010 tax deal, which extended the Bush tax cuts in return for the passage of middle-class stimulus. 
 
 The laws passed by the 111th Congress were controversial, particularly among Republicans. They were also big, bold initiatives that, if not always fully equal to the size of our problems, surely perched on the outer edge of Congress’s capacity to deliver solutions. Love it or hate it, the 111th Congress governed. No Congress in recent history has a record of productivity anywhere near it. 
 
 Terrible Policy 
 
 What’s the record of the 112th Congress? Well, it almost shut down the government and almost breached the debt ceiling. It almost went over the fiscal cliff (which it had designed in the first place). It cut a trillion dollars of discretionary spending in the Budget Control Act and scheduled another trillion in spending cuts through an automatic sequester, which everyone agrees is terrible policy. It achieved nothing of note on housing, energy, stimulus, immigration, guns, tax reform, infrastructure, climate change or, really, anything. It’s hard to identify a single significant problem that existed prior to the 112th Congress that was in any way improved by its two years of rule. 
 
 The 112th, which was gaveled into being on Jan. 3, 2011, by newly elected House Speaker John Boehner, wasn’t just unproductive in comparison with the 111th. It was unproductive compared with any Congress since 1948, when scholars began keeping tabs on congressional productivity. 
 
 When it ends, the 112th Congress will have passed about 220 public laws -- by far the least of any Congress on record. Prior to the 112th, the least productive Congress was the 104th, from January 1995 to January 1997. Not coincidentally, that Congress also featured a new Republican House majority determined to ruin a Democratic president in advance of the next campaign. The 104th, however, passed 333 public laws -- almost 50 percent more than the 112th. The 112th stands alone in its achievement of epic failure. 
 
 Of course, raw productivity statistics can mislead. After all, if the 112th Congress’s laws were particularly worthwhile, or if its low productivity reflected a period of political calm and economic growth, the slow rate of legislating might even be a good thing. In this case, however, the raw data mislead in the other direction. The 112th Congress wasn’t merely unproductive: It was devastatingly counterproductive. 
 
 The 112th found legislating so difficult that lawmakers repeatedly created artificial deadlines for consequences and catastrophes intended to spur them to act. But like Wile E. Coyote with his endless supply of Acme products, when the 112th set a trap, the only sure bet was that it would explode in its collective face, forcing leaders to construct yet another hair-trigger legislative contraption. 
 
 No Responsibility 
 
 The near-shutdown of the federal government in early 2011 was the first of these self-detonated disasters, the near-breach of the debt ceiling in August 2011 was the most damaging, and the fiscal cliff was the dumbest. In each case, Congress mainlined a dose of fear and uncertainty into an economy already beset by too much of both. In each case, the deadline failed to spur responsibility; instead, Congress punted on hard decisions while setting up a new deadline to supplant the old, discarded one. 
 
 In that way, the 112th ended as it began: by creating a mess it couldn’t clean up. The resolution, such as it is, of the fiscal cliff simply sets up another fight in the weeks ahead over the debt ceiling and sequestration. Continued fear and uncertainty over the impending battle is the legacy of the 112th to the nation’s economy. Thanks, guys. 
 
 As a result of its good works, the 112th Congress was the least popular since pollsters began keeping score. According to the Gallup Organization, the 112th’s approval rating fell to 10 percent in February 2011 and again in August that year. Those are the lowest readings in Gallup’s 38 years of surveying. When another polling firm, Rasmussen, asked Americans in March 2011 how they’d feel about the U.S. turning into a communist country, 11 percent said they’d approve. So congratulations, 112th: You were, at multiple points, less popular than communism. 
 
 The 112th didn’t even achieve the narrow political objective that Republican leaders sought. Insofar as there was a theory behind their effort to grind the U.S. government to a halt by making Congress a destructive force, it was that American voters would blame the failures of Washington on the party in charge of the White House, leading to President Barack Obama’s defeat. Yet Republicans were so mistrusted that, despite the previous two years of ineffectual governance and a weak economy, Obama was re-elected by a margin of five million votes, and Democrats won more votes than Republicans for House and Senate seats, as well. 
 
 The source of the 112th’s dismal performance is easy enough to diagnose. According to political scientists Keith Poole and Howard Rosenthal, who’ve developed a highly respected gauge of political polarization, the 112th was the most polarized Congress in U.S. history, with House Republicans exhibiting a particular leap in partisanship. Moreover, the results of the 2010 election divided power among House Republicans, Senate Democrats and a Democratic president, ensuring that party polarization would lead to political paralysis. 
 
 Unfortunately, the polarization and paralysis exhibited by the 112th Congress are functions of long-term political trends, and there’s no evidence that they’ll lift anytime soon. So while the 112th Congress was surely one of the most broken and incompetent in our history, the worst is probably yet to come. 
 
 (Ezra Klein is a Bloomberg View columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.) 
 
 To contact the writer on this article: Ezra Klein in Washington at wonkbook@gmail.com. 
 
 To contact the editor responsible for this article: Francis Wilkinson at fwilkinson1@bloomberg.net.
– Harry Truman called the 80th Congress "do-nothing" in 1948, but they look like massive overachievers compared to today's crop of lawmakers, a USA Today analysis finds. The 112th Congress has passed just 61 bills out of 3,914 into law this year, putting it on course to be the most unproductive since year-end records began in 1947. Only 90 bills became law last year. One post-World War II year, 1995, had an even lower total than 2011, but the Republican-controlled Congress managed to produce 245 laws the following year with a Democratic president. After two years marked by partisanship and failure to agree on issues including debt reduction and drought relief, the 112th Congress will conclude after Election Day and most people will be happy to see it go, according to the latest Gallup poll. The poll found that just 10% of Americans think members of Congress are doing a good job, tying a record low set in February of this year. The highest approval rating this Congress has received came in May 2011, when it reached the dizzying heights of 24% approval, notes Politico.