Here's An Interesting Time Sink

As most of you know, politics and the legislative sausage making process are an interest of mine. I'm one of those kids from the 70s who watched School House Rock every Saturday morning on TV and actually paid attention to "Conjunction Junction" and "I'm Just a Bill." Given that, I should probably have gotten a degree in political science instead of history and anthropology, but that would have made life difficult for me once I had my spiritual awakening since what passes for politics these days is wholly incompatible with a Christian life (unless you are a hypocrite).

Any horse thief, having spent some quality time at work looking into the inner working of Obamacare (in all it's 2400+ pages of glory) and how it might affect the things we do around here and listening/reading the news lately about the Gang of 8 Immigration Reform bill (itself a kilopage behemoth not including amendments), it occurred to me that no one really has a grasp on how big the United States Code has become, how far it has strayed, etc.

That led me to ask what the First Congress did in terms of legislation. Well, here is a handy link to answer just that question courtesy of the Library of Congress. Looking through the table of laws, the first Congress enacted less than 30 laws in its first year mainly roughing in the details of the things The Constitution said Congress was supposed to be doing. During the first four years, the total page count of all laws in the United states was less than 300 pages.

Let's recap for comparison's sake for just a sec...

All bills passed into law during the first FOUR years of Congress: less than 300 pages (which pretty much everyone read and understood before voting began)

Obamacare: Over 2000 pages (that no one read in its entirety much less understood before passing it)

Something is very screwed up here. The US Code is now well north of 200,000 pages not including Executive Orders, Regulations, Policies and the Whims of Bureaucrats (TM).

Prior to 1800, every man, woman and child in America that could read could read and comprehend every single page and word passed by Congress (if they had a copy) in less than a week. Less than a day if they read fast. Now, not so much.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. Start paying attention to what your horse thieves are doing and hold them accountable.