Rare News Desk
All the big-government types are lamenting that half way through the 113th Congress, it is “well on track to being the least productive lawmaking effort in the nation’s history,” according to National Public Radio. Actually, that’s good news.
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President Calvin Coolidge said, “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.” If we go by the Coolidge standard, the current Congress and the one that preceded it have been very productive—because they killed a lot of bad bills.
What the media consider a “productive” Congress is when the government passes multiple major bills that expand regulations, raise taxes and hand out lots of money.
For example, at the end of 2010 there were numerous news stories about how the 111th Congress, which encompassed President Obama’s first two years, was the most productive in decades. The American Enterprise Institute’s liberal gadfly Norman Ornstein considered it the most productive since the 89th Congress (1965-66), when President Lyndon Johnson passed Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty.
In the first two years of Obama’s reign, Congress passed the $814 billion economic stimulus bill, Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, which included Obama’s new consumer protection board, Cash for Clunkers, an expansion of the Children’s Health Insurance Program and almost got an environmental cap-and-trade bill passed.
But it was precisely because of that unconstitutional big-government assault that the public pushed back with a historic ousting of Democrats in November 2010. And that flip resulted in two of what Democrats and the media consider the least productive Congresses.
The Pew Research Center tracks what it considers substantive legislation (as opposed to ceremonial). The 112th Congress, the one encompassing the pushback against Obama, passed 63 substantive bills, according to Pew. For the first half of the 113th Congress, which ended in December, Congress has passed 55 so far, with one year left to go.
The least productive Congress before Obama came into office? The 104th (1995-6), passing 74 substantive bills. That was when Republicans took control of both the House and Senate for the first time in 40 years. And that takeover was a direct response to Bill Clinton, along with sidekick Hillary, who tried to impose Hillarycare on the country, raise taxes and generally act like big-spending, liberal Democrats who had full control of both the White House and Congress.
And when was Congress at its most productive? During the years that Republicans controlled both Congress and the White House, 2001-2006. During those three congressional sessions, 81, 144 and 124 substantive bills passed, respectively. There were some good things in that Republican bill-passing spree—including the Bush tax cuts—but there was virtually no spending restraint, which is why the public booted the Republicans out in 2006 and elected a Democratic House and Senate.
While the media may love a productive Congress, the American people are less enamored.
The fact is the U.S. Constitution limits the federal government to certain “enumerated” powers, which means that there are numerous areas that Congress and the president have no business being involved in. In other words, a “do nothing” Congress is probably a constitutional Congress.
http://www.npr.org/2013/12/24/256696665/congress-is-on-pace-to-be-the-least-prod
