Friday the 13th... heh. Wonder what mischief the political class will be up to now...
I use a website called GovTrack to keep an eye on my congressional codel and what they're up to. The site owner has a blog, too, and put this bit up:
Does it seem like Congress is getting less done than usual this year? Well, it’s true. Congress has enacted fewer bills in the last six months than in any first-six-months period after an election going back at least to 1993. I don’t have bill data going further back than that, so I don’t know just how “do-nothing” our Congress is. We’ve had 42 enacted bills so far this year, compared to the average of 94 for the similar time periods in the previous seven Congresses — so about half as much.
His whole post, with some more data, is here.
After 50 years of US-style governance, I must freely admit that I find, on aggregate, doing less is generally more, in terms of politicians and their impacts. Gimme that divided government. The fact that Congress has been wrapped up over Iraq and Immigration, and thus able to do little more than name Post Offices, doesn't really bother me that much, in aggregate - because it has kept them from much mischief in other areas.
Don't get me wrong - there are some issues that can really only be addressed via the political process - and Iraq and Immigration are certainly topics that fit that bill. But too often we find things being done because the political class is driven to "do something" - and to be seen doing something... even if it doesn't really need doing, or won't truly have much effect on things, except to jerk around some sub-group of society that now has more paperwork to do, reports to submit, checks to write, at the behest of some other sub-group of society.
Just random synaptic activity of a Friday morning.
Update: I love it when a Congressman simply confirms what I said... via K-Lo at The Corner...
Well, At Least He's Honest [Kathryn Jean Lopez]Via Boehner's office:
Even Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) admitted that the Democrats’ bill was a political charade, telling reporters yesterday that Democrats had to bring the bill to the floor to pacify antiwar groups: “If we don't do anything, these groups will feel like we haven't done anything.”
07/13 08:55 AM
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