On October 4 we wrote about Carlos Gimenez, who has introduced 50 bills since 2021 and never had one become law. The only one that made it to the president's desk, Trump vetoed.

So we checked everyone else. We pulled the full record of every bill sponsored by every sitting member of Congress on this site, all 191 of them, from Congress.gov, the official record kept by the Library of Congress.

Gimenez is not alone. Fifteen more Republicans who have been in Congress since 2021 or earlier have never had a single bill they sponsored become law. Together they have served 118 years and introduced 993 bills.

Sixty-five of those bills passed the House. Not one of them passed the Senate.

How we counted

We counted bills only, not resolutions. That is why the totals here are smaller than the "Sponsored Legislation" number on each member's Congress.gov page. A bill counts as a law only if Congress.gov says it "Became Public Law."

We were careful to be fair. Sometimes two members file the same bill, one in the House and one in the Senate, and only the Senate version passes. That still counts as getting your bill passed, so we left off anyone whose identical bill became law under the other chamber's number. Guy Reschenthaler, for example, is not on this list: his bill to help police officers in crisis became law as a Senate bill. Lance Gooden, Tim Burchett and several others came off the list the same way.

We also left off members whose bills the Senate passed at the end of September and are now headed to the president. Claudia Tenney, August Pfluger, Lloyd Smucker and John Joyce had never had a bill become law, but each now has one that has passed both chambers: Tenney's, Pfluger's, Smucker's and Joyce's.

Everyone below is what is left.

The list

All 15 are running for re-election in November.

Jim Jordan: 19 years, 30 bills, every one dead in committee

Jim Jordan has been in Congress since 2007. In that time he has introduced 30 bills. Not one of them got a vote on the House floor. Every single one was sent to a committee and never came out.

Jordan is not a backbencher. He is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, one of the most powerful jobs in the House. Since January 2023 he has introduced exactly one bill, a free-speech bill that also died in committee. In the current Congress, which began in January 2025, he has not introduced any.

What he does with the committee instead is investigate. We have written about how he used it to refer Jack Smith for prosecution.

Chuck Fleischmann: the same bill passed five times, still not law

Chuck Fleischmann has been in Congress since 2011, and more of his bills have passed the House than anyone else's on this list. Eleven of his 44 have. None ever got through the Senate.

One bill shows the pattern. It would put land in Monroe County, Tennessee, including the Sequoyah Museum, into trust for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, according to Congress.gov's summary. Fleischmann got it through the House in 2018, 2019, 2021, 2023 and 2025. Each time it went to the Senate and stopped. A Senate committee held a hearing on the latest version on September 23, 2026, more than a year and a half after the House passed it.

Fleischmann chairs the House subcommittee that writes the yearly spending bill for energy and water projects. Two of his House-passed bills are those spending bills. That money was approved as part of bigger spending packages instead, so neither of his own spending bills became law.

Warren Davidson: 117 bills, nothing to show

Warren Davidson has been in Congress for 10 years and has introduced 117 bills, more than anyone on this list except Nicole Malliotakis. Five passed the House. His best-known, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, would have stopped police and intelligence agencies from buying records about Americans' phone and internet accounts, and made them get a court order instead. It passed the House in April 2024. The Senate never voted on it.

The others

• Scott DesJarlais, in Congress since 2011: 43 bills, 3 passed the House, none became law.
• Nicole Malliotakis, since 2021: 119 bills, the most on this list, and none became law.
• Beth Van Duyne, since 2021: 105 bills, 5 passed the House, none became law.
• Carol Miller, since 2019: 90 bills, 2 passed the House, none became law.
• Jay Obernolte, since 2021: 9 of his 60 bills passed the House, the most on this list after Fleischmann. None became law.

What this doesn't count

Congress often bundles small bills into huge must-pass laws, like the yearly defense bill. When that happens, the member's own bill stays on the books as "not passed," even though some of its words became law.

Some of these members have had pieces folded in that way. Jay Obernolte's bill to protect the 988 suicide crisis line from hackers was included in a larger law. So was Carol Miller's tax bill for gig workers, which went into Trump's 2025 budget bill.

That is not nothing, and it is not the same as passing a law. Every member on this list has had years to get one of their own bills through. None of them has.

What the record shows

Fifteen Republicans on this site have been in Congress since 2021 or earlier and have never had a bill they sponsored become law. Together they have served 118 years and introduced 993 bills. Sixty-five of those bills passed the House, and none passed the Senate. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has introduced 30 bills in 19 years and not one reached the House floor. Chuck Fleischmann's Cherokee land bill has passed the House five times and never become law. All 15 are asking voters for another term in November.

Sources

• Every member's sponsored bills, from Congress.gov, the Library of Congress's official record of legislation. Counts are as of October 8, 2026. The table above links each member's Congress.gov page.