The "Do Nothing" Congress

Sixty-seven days until the next election, and only 130 days until we swear in the next Congress. The 110th Congress swept into office after the 2006 Elections in what can only be called a huge win for the Democratic Party.

In the 110th Congress, Democrats are the controlling majority in both chambers. (The last time they had such control was the 103rd Congress in 1995.) In Election `06, not one Democratic-held seat was won by a Republican challenger, and they gained enough GOP seats to kick the Republicans into the minority.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) became the first woman Speaker of the House, where she reigns over 233 Democrats and 202 Republicans. Robert Byrd (D-WV) got bumped up to the big chair of Senate Pro Tem, where he's had a 51 to 49 majority for most of his time in office.

The Democrats won Congress in landslide; The public hates George W. Bush; the economy has tanked; and the war is incredibly unpopular...

We should have hand two years of almost non-stop liberal legislation, right? Hope and change should be flowing forth from Washington like water through the levies in New Orleans (after Karl Rove and Dick Cheney dynamited them.)

After all, in 2004 John Kerry (D-MA) and John Edwards (D-NC) ran for the Oval Office on a platform that promised jobs at home, respect abroad, and free health care for all. The rapidly upcoming presidential election kicked off with primaries that started before Sen. Kerry had even finished his concession speech... with a huge stable of Democratic Congresscritters running: Bayh, Biden, Clinton, Daschle, Dean, Dodd, Feingold, Kucinich, Obama, plus four governors, three former congressmen, a two term former Veep, and one assumes a partridge in (an organic, fair-trade) pear-tree.

Every single one of these people promised "hope" and "change," even if it wasn't until about a third of the way into the New Hampshire that Sen. Obama's staffers headed down to the copyright office to make "Change®" a registered trademark of the Committee to Hope for Believing in Change, LLC.

So... the Democrats have a lock on Congress, and a whole slew of them are out explaining to every television camera they can find all about their plans to make America a better place. Do they do ANYTHING to make it happen in their current jobs? Not a blessed thing.

This recent article in the Wall Street Journal summarizes the 110th Congress’s actions since inauguration day in January 2007, thusly: “In two decades of record keeping, no sitting Congress has passed fewer public laws at this point in the session — 294 so far — than this one.” Only weeks before, Time offered up a equally maudlin report: “The 260 laws passed by the 110th Congress represent a 30-year low, and they include the naming of 74 post offices, not to mention the nonbinding resolutions designating July National Watermelon Month and recognizing dirt as an essential natural resource.”

Let's hear it for the most conservative Congress in our nation's history! Three cheers for Nancy Pelosi, our new Regan! Hip! Hip! Huh? What?

That's right, I think the utter failure of the Democratic 110th Congress is a good thing. “That government is best which governs least,” Thomas Paine famously wrote in Civil Disobedience, and the Founding Fathers drafted first the Articles of Confederation and then the U.S. Constitution to enshrine that very principal. To a conservative/libertarian, like me, smaller government is better government. The less laws Congress passes, means the less Congress is interfering in my life.

So, despite all of the Democrats high rhetoric and carefully laid plans, their sheer incompetence at their jobs as legislatures and their obsession with winning the Oval Office has caused them - quite inadvertently, I'm sure - to be a truly outstanding example of why limited government works.

Please, don't mistake my satisfaction with their ability to do much with approval of what little they did do. The 110th Congress has not been perfect. Irresponsible largesse and wasteful legislation has squeaked through in the form of, to name only three, the Farm Bill and the minimum-wage hike. Congress has declined to approve free-trade agreements, went on vacation instead of even having a debate on whether or not to debate an energy bill, and has left military personnel wondering whether they will receive proper funding to fight the War on Terror.