The 113th Congress is on track to be the “least productive” in six decades, sending President Obama fewer public bills to be signed into law than any president since the end of World War II.
With Congress currently in recess for the November midterm elections, it looks like the 113th Congress will retire at the end of the year having sent the president only 165 bills — 21 of which simply rename government or postal facilities and one of which names an Interstate highway.
To become a law, a bill must pass both chambers of Congress and later be signed by the president. Now, to be precise, the 113th Congress has passed hundreds of bills, each chamber producing thousands of pages of legislation. The issue is that very few of these have managed to make it out of Congress and onto the president’s desk.
“Another handful of bills have been sent to the president, but unless the 113th has an unprecedented burst of productivity when members return for the lame duck, the die is cast,” Roll Call reported, noting that post-election time in Congress is generally unproductive.
The number of bills sent so far in 2014 to the president is well below the 283 pieces of legislation passed by the 112th Congress and the 383 measures approved by the 111th Congress. (Although in defense of the current Congress, the previous Congress benefits from some grade inflation. It re-named more than twice as many buildings.)
Congressional Democrats complain that Republican obstructionism has created the “most do-nothingest Congress” in recent history.
During a press conference last week, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., attacked Republican leadership for releasing lawmakers for the midterms elections five days earlier than scheduled.
“It is a good afternoon,” Pelosi said, “but not a good afternoon for Congress to adjourn for this session.”
“We were supposed to be here tomorrow, then another week,” she added. “Now we’ve been informed by the Republican leadership that anything that we were ever going to do is over until we come back for the lame-duck session.”
She continued: “The American people have to ask, ‘What do you do for a living? What do you do for my living? What are you doing for me?’”
Now, there are two ways to look at this: Either you can bemoan Washington’s infamous gridlock — the stuff that has supposedly prevented the passage of multiple bills — or you can celebrate the fact that Congress has failed to pass even more laws meant to dictate your actions and decisions. After all, do you really want Congress working overtime? Is the title of “least productive” really so bad?
Finally, an exit question for the Right’s anti-GOP Leadership, crowd: If the stated desire is to see congressional Republicans block the White House and his allies, shouldn’t GOP leaders get at least a little credit for limiting the number of new laws enacted under Obama?
