Don Wolfensberger at The Hill:
Counting laws is a poor indicator of either productivity or the significance of a Congress’s actual accomplishments. For one thing, Republicans don’t think more laws necessarily translate into real progress. As former Republican Speaker “Uncle Joe” Cannon (Ill.) put it, “The country don’t need any legislation,” as, “everything is all right out West and in Danville.”
A more accurate assessment of the current Congress can be summed-up with just three words: delays, defeats and dissension — a 3-D picture that jumps out at you for its sheer weirdness. On delays, consider the four-day, 15-ballots required last January just to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Speaker, and the three-weeks and four ballots it took in October to elect a successor after McCarthy had been ousted at the initiative of just eight of his party colleagues.
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It would be unfair to prematurely label the 118th Congress the worst ever with a whole year to go. However, presidential election years are notoriously short and unproductive. Whether this Congress will rival the do-little Great Depression’s 72nd Congress for a paucity of laws remains to be seen. But it is bound to take some time before the country will again be chirping along to “Happy Days Are Here Again.”