A. Barton Hinkle Asks Congress To Do Less

You can’t
swing a dead cat by the tail these days without hitting a news
story about the lack of legislation issuing from the 113th
Congress. From CNN to McClatchy to NPR to the L.A. Times,
the air is thick with pieces lamenting that the 113th makes “the
infamous ‘do-nothing Congress’ of the late 1940s look downright
prolific.” Apparently we’re all supposed to feel really bad about
that. But, if you unpack the assumption behind the stories about
congressional productivity, writes A. Barton Hinkle, you find a
bias toward statism: the notion that government action is
inherently good, and that more government action is inherently
better.

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