Number of Bills Sponsored

While I was doing research for my last paper, I looked up the bills that my Congressman, David Dreier [R-CA-26], was head sponsoring in this current session of Congress. He is sponsoring a total of 9. At first I thought, "Wow. This Guy is not doing very much. He is only trying to pass 9 bills." This makes sense when one thinks of the thousands of bills that are proposed each session of Congress. I looked up six other random members of Congress to see how many bills they were proposing this session. On the lowest end, Nancy Pelosi [D-CA-8] and John Boehner [R-OH-8] each were proposing 12 bills. Then Louie Gohmert [R-TX-1] was sponsoring 13 of his own. Then came Neil Abercrombie [D-HI-1] with 20, John Campbell [R-CA-48] with 23, and Barney Frank [D-MA-4] with 46 of his own. All six of these members of Congress come out to averaging a head-sponsorship of 21 bills each in this current session of Congress. That's 12 more than my Congressman, David Dreier. I realized that this is probobly not a case of laziness by an incumbent, but that it is actually a plus. To only introduce a small number of bills compared to the average, you are able to focus more of your efforts, time, and resources to securing the passage of those. I'm sure that Barney Frank, if he is taking an active role in securing the passage of his 46 bills, has his plate too full and his work cut out for him. David Dreier, on the other hand, is able to focus on passing bills only for the topics that are the most important to him and his constituents. More members of Congress should think about trimming the amount of societal "good" they are trying to do and focus their efforts on passing less, but more effective legislation.