INDIANAPOLIS — What has Indiana’s congressional delegation been up to since January 2025? They honored the 1980 American men’s Olympic hockey team. One Republican authored a housing bill but missed the final vote. They voted unanimously to release the Jeffrey Epstein files … and then crickets.
And our two U.S. Senators — Todd Young and Jim Banks — were decisive votes to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Hegseth is presiding over the Iran war fiasco that has prompted the U.S. to evacuate a number of destroyed Middle Eastern bases and pull our B1 bombers out of Great Britain. Kennedy has reintroduced measles.
Indiana’s 11-member delegation is arguably one of the worst in my four-decade journalism career. Here are some metrics to back up this assertion.
This 119th Congress has passed a mere 118 bills into law of more than 16,000 filed since it took the gavel in January 2025. A Snopes review found that the 93rd Congress during President Richard Nixon’s administration approved more than 1,600 pieces of legislation.
Of the 118 laws in the 119th, only 19 had a Hoosier member sign on as a sponsor. No House or Senate member from Indiana has passed any significant stand-alone legislation as a primary sponsor.
Some of these 19 laws with Indiana sponsors are technical in nature or seek to honor specific individuals or groups. Nine Indiana members signed on to House Bill 452, which awards three Congressional Gold Medals to the members of the 1980 U.S. Olympic Men’s Ice Hockey Team. What took them so long?
The most consequential policy legislation — House Bill 6644, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act — lists Rep. Marlin Stutzman as a sponsor, but he was absent for the final vote. President Donald J. Trump refused to sign it into law, calling it a “big yawn.”
Perhaps the most consequential bill with the most widespread public support — House Bill 4405, which would “require the Attorney General to release all documents and records in possession of the Department of Justice relating to Jeffrey Epstein” — had no Indiana sponsors. It passed the House 427-1 in November 2025, cleared the Senate by unanimous consent and was signed into law by Trump.
To date, Attorney General Todd Blanche has ignored HB 4405. Only half of the 6 million pages have been released publicly. In the summer of 2025, facing a revolt led by Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie, Speaker Mike Johnson simply canceled the rest of the summer session.
U.S. Rep. Jim Baird said in a Nov. 18, 2025, Facebook post: “My vote today ... will ensure transparency in this ongoing investigation and hopefully deliver some long-overdue justice for the victims.”
Hopefully.
Yet the DOJ continues to hide half of the Epstein files. I found little protest from Indiana’s Republican delegation.
Our delegation has little clout. No Hoosier member chairs a committee.
The 119th Congress will go down in history as the one that ceded much of its power of the purse to the White House. Elon Musk’s unofficial Department of Government Efficiency cut more than $1 billion from over 400 federal contracts and grants in Indiana, according to Center for American Progress.
Indiana’s GOP delegation appears to support Trump’s widespread tariffs, which my analysis shows have cost our state $2 billion in exports to China. Axios reported that these tariffs have cost Hoosier consumers $8.4 billion since April 2025 — more than $3,000 per household. Indiana’s sprawling auto parts industry has been hit the hardest.
These tariffs have affected our two biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, primary destinations for Hoosier farm goods (nearly 50% of Indiana’s agricultural trade).
The 119th session saw the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, lasting 43 days and stretching through the fall of 2025 after lawmakers failed to reach a deal to extend expiring healthcare subsidies under the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. That prompted 60,000 Hoosiers to lose Obamacare coverage.
This Congress also failed to pass a war powers resolution after Trump attacked Iran on Feb. 28 without notice. The conflict has prompted the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and created a similar chokepoint in the southern Red Sea, dramatically increasing prices for gasoline, diesel fuel and fertilizer, and hammering Indiana’s fragile farm economy.
Meanwhile, Rep. Jim Baird received the third-highest reimbursement — $41,549 — of any House member. Rep. Mark Messmer used his taxpayer-funded franking privilege to pay for campaign TV ads.
Rep. Victoria Spartz has largely ignored her embattled homeland, Ukraine, as the 119th Congress has cut off funding for a democracy fighting Russia’s invasion.
When Massie proposed legislation to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for his oversight of the Iran war and extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean, Johnson simply recessed the House weeks ahead of schedule.
Yes, all this inertia comes amid Republicans controlling both chambers and the White House. Indiana members of Congress make $174,000 a year, but they do little to earn this salary. Representing overtly gerrymandered districts, these members oversee often understaffed offices. They tend to communicate within their political ecosystems rather than across them. They don’t debate their election opponents. Most of them don’t participate in town halls.
According to Gallup, public approval of the 119th Congress stands at 10%. We have a delegation of invertebrates, lacking the spine to stand up for Indiana. There’s an election Nov. 3.
Brian A. Howey is an opinion columnist for State Affairs Indiana and the founder of Howey Politics Indiana. His writing offers analysis and opinion shaped by decades of experience covering Indiana politics. Email him at howey@stateaffairs.com.
