Boehner: Congress Is Focused, Not Unproductive
Speaker John A. Boehner doesn’t want to hear that Congress has been “historically unproductive.”
“That’s just total nonsense,” Boehner said, cutting off a reporter before he could finish his question about how Congress has recently had fewer and fewer bills signed into law.
“Now listen: We made clear when we took over that we weren’t going to be doing commemorative legislation on the floor,” Boehner said. “In addition to that, most Americans think we have too many laws. What they want us to do is repeal more of those. So I reject the premise to the question. We got a big job to do here. We need to stay focused on those things that are most important to the American people.”
The Ohio Republican vowed when he took office that the House would not fill its time with post office naming bills or other insignificant measures that Congress rubber-stamps and the president auto-pens.
“The metrics used to hold Congress accountable are often flawed,” Boehner said in his 2010 Pledge to America. “Rather than using the scale of how well elected representatives represent the views of the people, the scale is often currently measured in bills passed, dollars spent and programs created.”
The Huffington Post recently charged that the 113th Congress is on pace to be the least productive Congress in history; it says the 112th Congress is the least productive because it had the fewest number of bills signed into law.
Our own David Hawkings also recently posted on the topic.