Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) lamented the state of Congress in an interview on Sunday, saying that everyone should be ‘ashamed’.
“Every one of us should be ashamed of what we’re looking through in the 118th Congress,” Manchin told CNN’s Manu Raju in an interview.
“Every congress up until this 118th Congress has basically produced about 500 bills a week to work on or agree on and pass some form of a piece of legislation,” Manchin continued. “We’ve only passed 69 bills.”
The 118th Congress is on track to be one of the least productive in US history. Last year Congress passed just 34 bills, the lowest number of bills passed in the first year of a congressional session since the Great Depression, according to ABC News
Former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman (R) told Raju that the current Congress is “dysfunctional”.
“You can be MAGA Republican, you can be a progressive Democrat, but if you’re willing to look at your job as solving problems, then you figure out how to find common ground,” Portman said in the interview alongside Manchin. “And that needs to be the overriding concern. I worry that that is in short supply in the Senate today.”
Portman decided to not seek re-election in 2022. He said in a statement at the time that, “it has gotten harder and harder to break through the partisan gridlock and make progress on substantive policy, and that has contributed to my decision.”
Manchin announced earlier this year that he will not run for reelection this November.
