35 Members Of Congress Who've Passed Zero Laws

Congress is a hostile environment for fledgling bills lately, with the past two Congresses holding places No. 1 and No. 2 for record low number of bills signed into law in U.S. history.

It's an accomplishment, therefore, for a member of Congress to write and pass even one bill per Congress, and even more of an accomplishment if the member doesn't chair a committee–committee chairs are often the ones to sponsor (and therefore get credit for) the bills that come out of their committees.

That said, we'd expect a congressperson to have passed a bill or two–even a silly one like naming a post office–by the time they've been in office for two or three terms, but there are a handful of members of Congress for whom that's not the case.

We dove into our database of Congresspeople to find every member who hasn't passed a bill in their current seat, then ranked the results by each members' time in office. Following are the 35 members of Congress who've never sponsored a bill that's been passed into law, who've also been in office the longest. A handful have been in their seats for over a decade. And No. 1 on the countdown? He's held his seat for 20 years without passing a single law.

Note: We broke all tie breakers for years in office by number of bills, in descending order, each member has sponsored. Every one of the following members has passed zero bills, but we've also provided the number of bills they've sponsored and cosponsored.

Sen. Al Franken