A Solution for the Do Nothing Congress

In the wake of the worst mass shooting in the United States our dithering, name-calling, finger-pointing, lazy, ineffective, posturing, posing, pain-in-the-ass politicians have failed to pass even one piece of legislation pertaining to the issue of too many criminals with too many guns. 

              Everyone who is surprised raise your hand.  No hands?  Right.  We shall continue, but not in the direction you might think.  This is not a column about gun control. 

The number of actionable pieces of legislation handled by our elected and tax paid Representatives and Senators has dropped from 26,222 pieces in 1973 to less than half that number, 10,199, in 2016.  The number of laws actually passed has dropped from 772 (!) to 177(!!!).  In 23 years these banana slugs in the Congress have dropped their record of accomplishment by 86%.

We elect people of different political views to the Congress to do one job, work for the betterment of the United States.  We recognize that they will have opposing definitions of the problems, the solutions, and methodologies, but these differences are a given.  Their job is to fold those differences into actionable laws that benefit all of us.  Legislators have done this for two centuries.  Always with more or less success, swiftly or slowly, with baby steps or confident strides, but it has happened. 

In roughly the life-time of my children, we have gone from the 93^rd Congress (1973-1975) acting on 26,222 pieces of legislation and passing 772 to the present 114^th Congress and its miserable 177 bills. The precipitous decline began with the beginning of Bill Clinton’s presidency when legislative production dropped from 610 to 473 bills and continues on its downward spiral to the 177 bills of this Congress. 

Evidently no one wants to do the hard work of passing a bill.  And it is hard work.  You have to meet with people you may or may not like, find common ground and deciding what you are willing to give up to achieve part of your objective.  Please notice, you do not achieve victory by telling the opposition what they must give up, but what you will.  Both sides must enter into this with the idea of producing something that all can agree on.  Why?  Because it is their freaking job!

 The work of a legislator is not to assign blame, but produce consensus. 

Let’s look at this week’s failure apropos to gun control legislation.  Sen. Grassley (R-Iowa) saw his amendment to enhance funding for the existing gun background check program fail 53-47.  Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) lost a measure to expand gun background checks and close the gun show loophole where firearm purchases are not tracked 44-56.  Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) tried to push a measure that would allow the government to delay gun sales to suspected terrorists for 72 hours.  Even the NRA backed this legislation, but it still failed 53-47.  And finally, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) backed a bill to keep people on a government terrorism watch list or other suspected terrorists from buying guns.  This was endorsed by the Justice Department and still lost 47-53. 

Do not tell me, with votes this close, that these 100 Senators couldn’t have found some language that they could all support.  They simply chose not to because they get paid the same whether they do any work or not.  I have a suggestion.  Let’s pay these louts by piece work.  They get paid nothing for the first 100 bills that are passed and 0.5% of their salary for each bill after that.  Then we’ll see how well they play with others.

Get tough and keep the faith.