"It's not quite a "do nothing" Congress – but it's not far off.
With
only a handful of remaining legislative days on their calendar, this
current Congress is on track to go down as one of the most unproductive
in modern history.
The paltry number of bills Congress has passed
into law this year paints a vivid picture of just how bad the gridlock
has been for lawmakers, whose single-digit approval rating illustrates
that the public is hardly satisfied with their trickle of legislative
activity.
If that sounds like a small number, it is.
Politico's Mike Allen explains how Democrats and Republicans will handle the problems associated with Obamacare in the new year.
At
this point in George W. Bush’s second term as president, for example,
113 bills had been enacted into law, according to numbers crunched by
Pew Research Center’s Drew DeSilver. In the same amount of time during
the 110
th Congress – from January until before the Thanksgiving recess of 2007 – that number was 120.
The numbers are a little bit different – but no less grim – after you break out bills that are merely ceremonial.
Of
course, some of the legislation that has reached the president’s desk
this year has involved some hard-fought and highly publicized issues
like reverse mortgage rules, high interest rates for students and
reopening the government after the lengthy shutdown.
Even the
Helium Stewardship Act – despite the fun it provided for headline
writers making “deflated hopes” jokes – addressed a worldwide shortage
that was hitting America’s high-tech industries hard.
But the list
of Washington’s accomplishments gets plenty of padding every year from
bridge namings, post office honors and various awards.
So far this
year, the president has signed legislation to specify the size of
commemorative coins for the Baseball Hall of Fame, to name a subsection
of IRS code after former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and to honor baseball
great Stan Musial with a namesake Midwestern bridge.
With the
ceremonial measures excluded, according to DeSilver’s calculations,
Congress has enacted just 44 “substantive” laws so far this year.
That’s well below the average of about 70 substantive bills passed in the equivalent time period between 1999 and 2012.
A major reason for
the lack of legislating, of course, rests in the divided government
re-elected in 2012. That left Democrats in control of the Senate and
White House, with Republicans in charge of the House.
Sarah
Binder, an expert on legislative politics at the Brookings Institute,
says that other factors are to blame as well, like policy disputes
between members of the same party and the dwindling number of moderates
willing to mediate tiffs between warring factions.
“Consensus is simply much harder to build if there’s nobody coming to the table,” she said.
The gridlock has meant that major issues – some with likely benefits for members of both parties – have been left on the table.
President
Barack Obama talks in San Francisco, Calif., about immigration reform
and whether he thinks House Speaker John Boehner is open to working on
the issue.
The Senate passed comprehensive immigration
reform legislation earlier this year but prospects for a vote in the
House are slim. House Republicans have voted some 47 times to either
repeal or somehow change the newly enacted health-care law, efforts that
have been shelved in the upper chamber.
That sets the backdrop
for an election year in 2014. With all 435 House seats up for
re-election and 33 Senate seats at stake next November, the balance of
power in Congress is very much in play.
Could there be another
reason for the lack of substantive laws? Perhaps the seeming eagerness
of lawmakers to hightail it out of Washington for recess?
So far,
the Senate has been in session 144 days this Congress, while the House
has been in for 147 legislative days. They’re still scheduled to vote on
at least eight more days before the end of the year.
That’s actually a little bit
better than the average over the last decade, according to records kept by the House Clerks’ office.
This Congress is at least on track to beat its predecessor, the 112
th Congress, which has been derided as the least productive Congress since 1948, when scholars started keeping official tabs.
That group had passed just 41 substantive laws by this point in 2011.
But
after the Senate’s unprecedented move last week to eliminate
filibusters for most presidential nominees, both parties are heading
into the holiday break with heightened animosity toward each other.
And that doesn’t bode well for a productive second half of the 113
th session.
With all of the data and opinions presented in this article, do you think the congress is at it's weakest?
Clearly the government shutdown proved how indecisive they were but does the other evidence justify their weakness? What other reasons can you think of for why the 113th Congress is least productive?
