Petty Business in Congress

Extract

In the national House of Representatives that adjourned on March 4,1931, there were introduced 18,356 bills and resolutions, in the Senate 7,080, making a total of 25,436 in two years. Favorable reports were made in the House on 2,734. Of these measures, 747 died on the House calendars, that is, were not acted upon. Measures that passed the House and were not acted upon in the Senate numbered 537; those that passed the Senate and not the House, 381; making a total of 913 that fell between the branches.

The measures that became law numbered 1,524, a figure to be reconciled with the previous figures by taking into account the instances where identical bills were introduced in House and Senate and one of them was laid aside. It is to be borne in mind that individual pension bills are combined in two or three big bills, which makes the showing not quite so bad as it appears on the face. This, however, does not alter the fact that more than one quarter of the measures reported to the House were not acted upon at all, and that between 800 and 1,000 passed one branch and were not acted upon by the other.