Every Current U.S. Senator, Ranked by the Legislative Record (2026)

What the record shows

The framework pays no attention to which party a senator belongs to. It counts two things any citizen can verify: bills that became law and votes actually cast. On those measures, the 118th Congress had one clear leader. Gary Peters of Michigan saw 24 of his sponsored bills become law, counting language folded into larger vehicles, while missing 0.6 percent of votes (GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards). The Center for Effective Lawmaking gave Peters a Legislative Effectiveness Score of 10.648, more than ten times the chamber average of 1.0, and noted it was his third consecutive Congress atop his party (Center for Effective Lawmaking, 118th Congress Highlights, 2025). By Peters's own office's stricter count, 15 standalone bills he authored were signed into law (Peters Senate office, December 2024).

John Cornyn of Texas led Republicans with 19 laws from 107 bills introduced, and CEL ranked him the most effective Senate Republican for the second straight Congress (Center for Effective Lawmaking, 2025). The top two spots are not close. Third place Padilla produced 7 laws; the gap between second and third is larger than the gap between third and twentieth.

Effectiveness and celebrity are different jobs

The senators with the largest national profiles mostly do not appear near the top. Ted Cruz carries the third highest Republican effectiveness score, 2.258, yet lands 17th here because he missed 8.5 percent of votes and converted 4 bills into law (Center for Effective Lawmaking, 2025; GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards). Bernie Sanders, among the most recognized names in American politics, saw zero sponsored bills become law in the 118th Congress and missed 9.4 percent of votes (GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards). If that result surprises readers, the receipts are one click away. The discomfort belongs to the reader, not the data.

The reverse is also true. Deb Fischer, Mike Rounds, and James Lankford rarely lead cable segments, yet each pairs enacted laws with attendance above 94 percent. CEL's research finding, repeated in its 118th Congress report, is that bipartisan coalition builders are consistently more effective than partisan warriors, even inside the majority party (Center for Effective Lawmaking, 2025).

How the three measures fit together, and why the weights are what they are

The composite runs 70 percent on enacted laws and 30 percent on attendance, with the Center for Effective Lawmaking's scores breaking ties and validating the order. The weighting is a judgment, disclosed rather than hidden, and it was chosen for a simple reason: enacting law is the job, and showing up is the precondition for the job. Readers should know how sensitive the result is to that choice. It is not very sensitive at the top. Peters ranks first and Cornyn second under any weighting that gives enacted laws at least a fifth of the index, because their output leads are enormous. The middle of the table compresses: senators with four or five enacted laws sit within a few points of one another, and a different weighting would shuffle ranks 5 through 20 by a handful of places without moving anyone from the top tier to the bottom or back (GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards).

The CEL scores serve as an independent check because they are built differently: fifteen metrics tracking every sponsored bill's substance and progress, normalized to a chamber average of 1.0 (Center for Effective Lawmaking, Methodology). The two systems agree where they overlap. Every current senator in CEL's published top-ten party tables lands in this composite's top 20, and no senator in the composite's bottom five appears anywhere in CEL's published leader lists. When two independent rulers measure the same thing and produce the same shape, the shape is probably real.

The bottom of the table

Four of the bottom five recorded zero sponsored bills enacted across two full years. Tim Scott of South Carolina sits last among the 85 scored senators: one law and a 21.6 percent missed-vote rate, the worst attendance of any senator who served the full Congress, accumulated in large part during his 2024 presidential run (GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards). John Fetterman missed 21.2 percent of votes, much of it during a documented hospitalization for depression in early 2023, and still landed above the bottom five on the strength of two enacted laws; context matters, and the numbers are reported without adjustment either way (GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards).

Campaigning explains several high missed-vote figures. It does not erase them. A senator who is absent casts no vote, and the framework scores votes, not reasons.

Who is not ranked, and why

Fifteen sitting senators took office in 2025 or 2026, or served only weeks of the 118th Congress, and have no complete scored record: the 2024 election class (Banks, Blunt Rochester, Alsobrooks, Curtis, Gallego, Justice, McCormick, Moreno, Sheehy, Slotkin), the appointees who replaced members joining the executive branch (Husted of Ohio, Moody of Florida, and Armstrong of Oklahoma, appointed after Markwayne Mullin resigned in March 2026), plus Adam Schiff and Andy Kim, who were sworn in early in December 2024 to fill unexpired terms (U.S. Senate roster, July 2026). Schiff's GovTrack missed-vote figure of 47.8 percent covers only weeks of Senate service and would mislead if ranked alongside full-term colleagues, so it is excluded rather than explained away.

They will be scored when the 119th Congress data is complete. Only actions matter, and they have not yet had time to act.

A note on timing for readers checking the sources: GovTrack's 2024 Report Cards were computed as of February 13, 2025 and cover the complete 118th Congress; the CEL scores for the same Congress were released March 24, 2025. Both datasets are final. Career patterns visible across editions add confidence in the snapshot: Cornyn also led all members of Congress in enacted sponsored bills in the 117th Congress, Peters topped his party's CEL table for the third consecutive Congress, and Collins has recorded perfect or near-perfect attendance for years, so the 118th numbers are not flukes of one two-year window (Center for Effective Lawmaking, 2025; GovTrack, 2024 Report Cards).