How many bills did Congress and the President sign into law in 2025?

1. What the narrow counts say — 37 and 38 enacted measures

Real-time bill trackers and news outlets that count “enacted” bills — meaning individual bills and joint resolutions that cleared both chambers and were enacted either by presidential signature, veto override, or automatic enactment — report a small number for calendar-year 2025: GovTrack’s rolling summary lists 37 enacted bills in the 119th Congress (as of its snapshot) ^[1], and The Independent published a contemporaneous tally saying Congress sent 38 bills to the president’s desk to be signed into law ^[2]. Those closely aligned totals reflect the common modern pattern noted by legislative data providers: fewer distinct bill numbers are passed, often because lawmakers bundle many policies together into omnibus or reconciliation vehicles ^[4].

2. Why a much larger number — 196 — appears in other reporting

An alternative accounting appearing in The Fulcrum counts “196 bills” enacted in 2025 and roughly 1,976 pages of new law, a figure that the author explains is driven by heavy use of omnibus, reconciliation, and incorporation techniques that fold multiple statutory changes into single, large enactments ^[3]. That method treats every incorporated or substantively distinct provision as a separately counted enactment in effect, producing a far higher headline number than trackers that count enacted bill numbers only ^{[3] [4]}. The discrepancy is largely about methodology, not necessarily a contradiction about whether action happened.

3. Counting rules and sources matter — what each dataset includes

GovTrack explicitly warns that its “enacted legislation” totals reflect automated analysis and may count bills that are identical to or incorporated into enacted legislation in particular ways ^[4], and Congress.gov provides the primary official actions interface from which daily enactment counts can be assembled but requires parsing by date and action type ^{[5] [6]}. LegiScan and other bill trackers maintain searchable databases for the 119th Congress but present different filters (passed vs. enacted) that will change tallies ^{[7] [8]}. In short, whether the headline is “37,” “38,” or “196” depends on whether the counter is tallying enacted bill numbers, measures sent to the president’s desk, or the discrete policy items folded into large statutes ^{[1] [2] [3]}.

4. Spot checks and corroborating details

Individual signatures recorded by official sources demonstrate that the president did sign major enacted measures in 2025 — for example, the White House posting for S.1071, the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2026, shows a presidential signature action in December 2025 ^[9], and Senate and House statements from senators like John Cornyn highlight multiple bills signed into law across the year ^[10]. Those concrete examples confirm that enactments occurred, but they do not resolve the total-count dispute without a consistent counting rule and a full audit of Congress.gov or the congressional actions log for the year ^{[9] [10] [6]}.

5. Bottom line and reporting limitation

Based on the provided reporting, the most defensible short answer is that publicly cited trackers report between 37 and 38 distinct enacted bill numbers for 2025, while at least one policy-focused account reports 196 enacted items when counting incorporated provisions and bundled measures; a definitive single number requires choosing and applying one counting convention and/or consulting an exhaustive Congress.gov enacted-legislation tally for the full calendar year ^{[1] [2] [3] [5]}. The available sources here document the competing counts and the reasons they diverge, but they do not include an authoritative reconciled ledger that would make one figure indisputably correct ^{[4] [6]}.