Blog - Fewer Laws, More Fluff

Wall Street Journal:

>Barring a burst of legislative activity after Labor Day, this group of 535 men and women will have accomplished a rare feat. In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session – 294 so far – than this one. That’s not to say they’ve been idle. On the flip side, no Congress in the same 20 years has been so prolific when it comes to proposing resolutions — more than 1,900, according to a tally by the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense.

I would add that this Congress has also broken the record for the most obstructionism of any session, ever. More bills have been filibustered in this Congress than ever before. We’re already at 131 filibusters (aka cloture motions) – the previous record was 82. tellingly, the old filibuster record was set during the 104th Congress, which, according to the WSJ, is also the Congress that passed the second-fewest number of public laws.