Slowing the march isn’t a step in the right direction

Say Uncle pointed me to this article about MSM whining about the lack of “productivity” of Congress. Apparently slowing down the destruction of freedom with still more laws is considered a bad thing.

In my book Congressional “productivity” would be measured by the net number of laws repealed per unit of time. But no one really knows how many laws we have so we really need a different metric for productivity in Joe’s world.

We do know as of the 1980 we had something on the order of 23,000 pages of Federal law. But we know that Obamacare has about 2,400 pages all by itself! And that doesn’t include the regulations that are derived from the law. The estimates on the number of pages of regulations are on the order of 170,000 pages. And the U.S. tax code has something on the order of 13,000 pages.

I’m thinking a reasonable productivity rate would be something on the order of a page per minute. After an entire year on the the job they would be most of the way through Obamacare. It would take decades to get back to constitutionally enumerated limits. But it took us decades to get here so as long as they are making progress at a rate equal to or greater than the rate we arrived here I can’t really complain a whole lot.

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5 thoughts on “Slowing the march isn’t a step in the right direction

  1. For every word put in statute or regulation, you have to take 10 out. Until we reach equilibrium at the 1900 level then it is one for one.

  2. One page a day? How about 1 law per day? It’ll still take years to get back to the constitutional republic that the a founders gave us.
    I’m not willing to be nearly so generous to the slugs in the district of corruption.

  3. I agree! Wholeheartedly! I wish they would take the time to repeal the bulk of unconstitutional laws on the books…but that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon…more’s the pity.

  4. The states are as bad or worse. I remember going to the PA capitol building and seeing a large aquarium 3/4 filled to the top with read and blue balls. My escort said one was for House bills passed and the other was for Senate bills passed.

    He was shocked at the look of horror on my face. He was an elected official.

  5. “…so as long as they are making progress at a rate equal to or greater than the rate we arrived here I can’t really complain a whole lot.”

    That would be an improvement, but we’d still be looking at rights violations on an on-going basis and saying that this is an improvement. Conceptually at least, that’s a bit like giving some horrible dictator the Nobel Peace Prize for murdering fewer citizens this year than he murdered last year.

    “…In my book Congressional “productivity” would be measured by the net number of laws repealed per unit of time.”

    They were making that point on Real News just a few nights ago, so there are others out there who are starting to get it. The problem is, of course, that we’d be looking to the same sons of bitches who got us in to this mess to somehow start getting us out of it. As some dude once said; The mindset that created a problem will never be able to solve it.

    When dealing with criminals (and we are) the first step in solving the problem is arrest and then prosecution. Until that happens reliably and swiftly, and for the right reasons, we will continue down this path.

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