A Look at the 109th Congress To Date
Not me but Jay Cost at Real Clear Politics Blog has: The
109th Congress…So Far
The conventional wisdom about the 109th Congress, now at the end of its first
session, has largely emphasized Republican division and a derailed agenda. This is
an interesting theory — and there are two ways one could look at it. On the one hand,
one could examine start-of-session expectations and then examine end-of-session assessments
of how Congress has met those expectations — placing it in the context of the congressional
soap opera. This is the usual method of assessing congressional performance.There is, however, another way to evaluate congressional performance. One could
compare this session with the average legislative output of other congressional sessions
to see how the 109th thus far compares to congressional history. I have seen no attempts
at this latter method. This is surely valuable, as it gets beyond the influence of
start-of-year expectations, which are almost always unrealistic.
Well seeing that they are getting paid to do a job, measuring to see if they are actually
doing anything is a good place to start.