Landmark Bill to Fix How Congress Passes Bills Has, Regrettably, Made It Illegal to Pass Bills

WASHINGTON — Congress passed sweeping legislation last Thursday designed to modernize, streamline, and fundamentally reimagine the way Congress passes legislation. By Friday morning, staffers had discovered that the legislation had, in the course of modernizing, streamlining, and fundamentally reimagining the process, made it technically impossible to pass any further legislation until the legislation about legislation had itself been legislated upon.

The bill, formally titled the Legislative Modernization and Efficiency Restoration Act of 2025, was hailed at its signing as a "generational leap forward for democratic governance" by its primary sponsor, Rep. Douglas Holt (R-OH), who acknowledged on Sunday that he had not personally read it.

"The broad strokes were very encouraging," Rep. Holt told reporters outside his office, before being quietly redirected by a staffer.

The Pre-Bill Problem

The issue, according to three different constitutional lawyers who have now each billed the federal government $40,000 to say roughly the same thing, lies in Section 14(c)(ii) of the Act, which defines a "qualifying legislative instrument" as any proposal that has completed a pre-submission eligibility review by the newly established Office of Legislative Readiness — an office that does not yet exist, has no appropriated budget, and whose director position was listed in a footnote as "to be determined following enactment of future enabling legislation."

Future enabling legislation which, of course, would itself be a bill.

The practical consequence is that every piece of legislation currently under consideration in either chamber has been reclassified, retroactively and automatically, as a "pre-bill" — a category that did not exist before Thursday and which the Act defines only as "a legislative instrument not yet eligible for consideration under Section 14(c)(ii)."

The Senate's pre-bill backlog currently stands at 214 items. The House's is 847. A resolution to name a post office in Tulsa has been caught in the reclassification.

"This is not a crisis," said a spokesperson for the House Rules Committee. "It is a transitional complexity event."

Three Committees, Zero Consensus

To address the transitional complexity event, three separate committees have been convened, each taking a meaningfully different position on what, if anything, can be done.

The House Judiciary Committee has concluded that the fix requires new legislation, which it acknowledges is presently impossible, and has referred the matter to the Senate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has concluded that the fix requires a procedural ruling rather than new legislation, and has referred the matter to the Senate Rules Committee.

The Senate Rules Committee has concluded that before it can issue a procedural ruling, it must first determine whether the Legislative Modernization and Efficiency Restoration Act supersedes its existing rulemaking authority — a question it has referred to the House Judiciary Committee.

Constitutional law professor Dr. Miriam Feld of Georgetown, who has been following the situation with what she describes as "mounting professional delight," explained the core difficulty.

"What you have here is a self-referential regulatory loop with no external entry point," she said. "Congress has passed a law that requires Congress to do something before Congress can do anything, including the thing that would allow Congress to do something. It's really quite elegant, in a catastrophic sort of way."

Dr. Feld's institution has since announced a new graduate seminar on the subject. Enrollment is full.

'We May Have Overcorrected Slightly'

The Act's passage was the culmination of a four-year effort by the bipartisan Congressional Modernization Working Group, itself formed in response to a 2021 report finding that the average bill took 3.7 years to move from introduction to vote. The Working Group's mandate was to cut that timeline in half.

Current projections suggest the pre-bill backlog will take between six and eleven years to clear, assuming the Office of Legislative Readiness is established, staffed, and operational — none of which can happen until a bill authorizing its creation clears the pre-bill backlog.

"We may have overcorrected slightly," conceded a senior Democratic staffer, speaking on background. "The intent was always good. The execution is where things got a little — and I want to be precise here — completely wrong."

The original bill was drafted with assistance from a Washington-based consulting firm, Meridian Policy Partners, which charged $1.7 million for its contribution and has since released a statement noting that its scope of work "did not include legal stress-testing of the final enrolled text."

Meridian Policy Partners has offered to assist with the remediation effort. Its proposal is currently under review. It has been classified as a pre-bill.

What Happens Next

The White House has declined to comment on whether the President will take executive action, noting only that the administration is "monitoring the situation closely and is committed to working with Congress on a pathway forward."

Rep. Holt, for his part, has introduced what he is calling a "technical corrections amendment" to the Legislative Modernization and Efficiency Restoration Act. It has been reclassified as a pre-bill.

Experts say the most likely resolution involves the Senate parliamentarian issuing an informal guidance memo that effectively sidesteps Section 14(c)(ii) pending establishment of the Office of Legislative Readiness. This guidance would be non-binding, procedurally ambiguous, and almost certainly challenged by at least four separate advocacy organizations within seventy-two hours of publication.

"At some point," Dr. Feld observed, "Congress will pass something. They always do. It will probably just be a bill about a post office in Tulsa, and everyone will quietly agree to treat it as proof that the system is working."

The Tulsa post office has been waiting since March. It remains, technically, a pre-bill.

A fourth committee is expected to be announced by end of week.