The DC-obsessed crew at Axios just flagged the current, 118th, Congress as the “most unproductive in modern history,” having only passed 20 bills this year (with four more on President Biden’s desk).
Weirdly, they treat that as a bad thing.
Sure, the country has plenty of problems, but “more bills” almost always means more trouble for the American public — a conveyer belt of pork-filled legislation that increases the ever-growing debt and hands more power to government bureaucrats.
Just look at the highly “productive,” Democratic-led 117th Congress (2021-3), which enacted an eye-popping 364 laws while enabling Joe Biden to spend more than any president in history.
The hilariously misnamed American Rescue Plan and Inflation Reduction Act set taxpayers back several trillion bucks, triggering inflation unseen in this country for decades, to splurge on progressive priorities including “green” subsidies that alone could cost an estimated $1.2 trillion — largely enriching connected insiders without getting America significantly closer to the carbon-free utopia of lefty dreams.
There’s a reason Democrats from Biden on down have stopped using the word “Bidenomics.”
Plus, of course, voters in late 2021 chose a (barely) Republican House and an (also barely) Democratic Senate, an excellent recipe for standoffs that makes passing any laws beyond difficult.
That the prez generally refuses to compromise with the GOP except when it lets him spend more only further gums up the works.
The job of Republicans in Congress is to rein in spending, taxes and all other federal overreach — and if they can’t, to at least slap Democrats’ hands when they try to reach deeper into Americans’ pocketbooks.
Passing the bare minimum of bills to keep the country chugging along (along with more bills that the Dem Senate rejects because they’d shrink spending) is a pretty fine record for Republicans who only control half of a single branch of the federal government.
We’d love another Reagan Revolution, but the last thing America needs right now is Washington-business-as-usual booming.
By comparison, gridlock is great.
Least productive? Take it as a compliment.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
