Does Congress still pass bills, or does it fold them into omnibus bills?
The Capture Index reads the public record of every committee in the 119th Congress. As of September 2026, 113 of 19,249 measures became law under their own number. 186 more had their text enacted inside other bills.
Omnibus and appropriations bills carry the rest. 74 bills carried those 186, and three of them carried 95. 146 were never reported by any committee. The One Big Beautiful Bill (H.R. 1, Public Law 119-21) contains the text of at least seven separate bills, including a Medicaid bill, a gig-economy tax bill and an energy bill. All seven were still in committee. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2026 combined 5 of the 12 regular spending bills into one law.
Much of what Congress did pass was a no. 23 joint resolutions under the Congressional Review Act became law, and each one is permanent because the agency may not reissue the rule in substantially the same form. Two of them returned 2,158,290 acres of federal coal to leasing consideration.
Meanwhile, the spending moves without review. 512 appropriations lines carrying $493.6 billion were funded in fiscal 2026 after their authorization expired. 477 came to the floor under a rule that waived every objection in advance, and 474 never named the clause being set aside.
The Capture Index below lets you check each of these findings against the record. For each committee it asks four plain questions. Did it do what it said it would do? What did it actually do, and who got the benefit? Which industries give money to its members? Who decided where the money goes, and which rules were set aside to move it?
Each answer starts with a question and a finding. Headline cards show how each figure was counted and what is missing. The claim ledger lists the sources, the counting rules and the dates. The evidence is there for you to examine. The conclusion is yours to draw.