The Brookings Institute has
released scores ranking how effective members of Congress were
in 2013. And by “effective” they mean how effective congresspersons
were at getting their proposed legislation through committee, a
major hurdle in the legislative process. What they find may
surprise you.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was the most efficient
Senator, which means Cruz got the highest percentage of
his proposed bills through committee (7 out of 8). Compare this to
Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) who proposed 61 pieces of legislation and
literally none of them made it through committee.
Using another metric to define productivity, Sen. Ron Wyden
(D-OR) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) had the highest number of their
bills make it through committee, 13 and 11 respectively. Thinking
about this another way for instance, Rand Paul was 4x as effective
at getting bills through committee than the average Senator would
be expected to.
It may surprise some that Paul and Cruz, two senators dubbed tea
party “wacko
birds” could be so effective in getting their legislation
through committee. It demonstrates that while these Senators are
often defined by their willingness to take ideological stances on
issues, albeit different stances at times, they are also willing to
engage with the actual political process in efforts to make
changes.
Here are some examples of what Rand Paul has gotten through
committee:
The Fourth Amendment Restoration Act
is an effort to prevent US government agencies from searching
Americans’ phone records without a warrant based on probable
cause.
The National Right-to-Work Act, would
repeal existing law in efforts to reduce the use of coerced
union membership as a condition of employment.
The Separation of Powers Restoration and Second Amendment
Protection Act
essentially tells the President that Congress will not accept
any executive orders, signing statements, or expenditures of
federal funds on projects or programs not appropriated to the
executive branch.
The Default Protection Act outlines
priorities for federal government obligations if the debt limit is
reached, including paying the interest and principal on public
debt, paying benefits to members of the Armed Forces, and paying
Social Security and Medicare.
Aside from getting bills through committee, examining simply the
number of bills proposed, Democratic senators and Bernie Sanders
(I-VT) took 9 of the 10 top slots, while Vitter, the lone
Republican, was first in proposing the highest number of bills. (In
the Republican-controlled house, Democrats also took a higher share
of the top slots with 7 of the top 10 bill proposers compared to 3
in 10 being Republicans.)
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