This Congress is the most productive we've seen under Obama's presidency
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Per the calculations of the Washington Times' Legislative Futility Index, the Republican-majority Congress, which took office this past January, is writing, debating, and passing bills at a significantly faster rate than we've seen in several years:
However, this acceleration does not exceed the pace of the Democratic Congress in the final years of George W. Bush's presidency — though, as a flurry of opposition activity in the face of a lame duck White House, it may mirror it.
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and minority leader Harry Reid both took credit for the current Congress' vigor.
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As for whether or not all this productivity is actually accomplishing good things — well, that's another question entirely.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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