Saturday, December 7, 2013
Lawmakers pass more blame than bills in do-nothing Congress
Link to article: CNN
This article says that if Congress doesn't pick up the pace, this will become the least productive Congress in at least the last 40 years. The House passes the blame on the senate, and vice versa. So far, 56 bills have been signed into law in the first session of the 113th Congress.
But is the fact that fewer bills are being passed in Congress necessarily a bad thing? That depends on your point of view, but both representatives and senators readily acknowledge that some major issues have not been addressed. One of the problems maybe that the Democrats and Republicans are growing more ideologically distant by the day, a recipe for gridlock.
I think the passing of fewer bills is a symptom and precursor of political gridlock. The government shut down in October exemplifies this. Among other examples, Congress hasn't passed budget, new farm bill, and none of the 12 annual spending bills have made it too the president's desk. Immigration reform has been held up along with tax and entitlement reforms.
It's unhealthy for the government be as unproductive as it is. Hopefully there will be changes made and issues addressed within Congress that promote its productivity.
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I disagree. I think less bills being passed, an underproductive congress is a good congress. I think some politican said something along the lines of an "over producing government is a tyrannical government." Do you want more and more federal laws to be put into our nation? Things would get more and more complicated.
ReplyDeleteWell I think there are extremes on both sides on the passing of bills. Overproducing is not good since it gives leeway for a tyrannical government to operate, but our system of passing bills is built already as an "unproductive" system. And I agree with you, an underproductive congress is good, our system is designed to be unproductive already. But when our government is passing bills at a rate that happens to be the lowest in 40 years in accordance with an already unproductive system for passing bills, that becomes a problem. Since bills that need to get passed such as the budget bill, farm bill, and other needed reforms, aren't getting passed timely or at all. So the extreme side of an underproductive congress would be that congress is so slow at passing bills that it doesn't accomplish what needs to be done. An example of that being the argument over the budget bill that caused the government shutdown in October.
DeleteI think that not passing too many bills is a good thing too. But it is very clear that this Congress has been ineffective. They were the main cause for the government shutdown. They continue to disagree and cause political unrest even after the setup of a temporary solution. I think that Congress really needs to work harder. They are representing our nation and are casting bad ideas into other nations' minds about what America is like.
ReplyDeleteI personally like a busy Congress, passing lots of bills. Other than the bad publicity they've received for not being "lazy" I would think, rather being too "stubborn" is more like it as Nathan says. The problem here is that now that this story has been severely inflated by media, they are making people think that "Quantity is more important than Quality." It dosnt matter if the number of bills being passed is small, but if they are leaving out important bills, than maybe quantity is more important.
ReplyDeleteI read a similar article in USA Today, and I think that Congress needs to be more productive on the issues that really matter. I think that Congress needs to be able to compromise and pass bills that are necessary for the country to run effectively. I don't think that passing way more bills is necessarily better, because those bills may be worthless and may not be in the best interest of the country.
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