Zandar's Thought Of The Day

So yes, we've just seen the most productive Congress in nearly 50 years draw to a close:

There is no debate, however, that the 111th Congress passed a historic volume of substantial legislation, whatever one might think about the merits of these achievements. Historian Alan Brinkley told Bloomberg yesterday that “[t]his is probably the most productive session of Congress since at least the ’60s,” for an article outlining the historic achievements of this session:

For the first time since President Theodore Roosevelt began the quest for a national health-care system more than 100 years ago, the Democrat-led House and Senate took the biggest step toward achieving that goal by giving 32 million Americans access to insurance. Congress rewrote the rules for Wall Street in the most comprehensive way since the Great Depression. It spent more than $1.67 trillion to revive an economy on the verge of a depression, including tax cuts for most Americans, jobs for more than 3 million, construction of roads and bridges and investment in alternative energy; ended an almost two-decade ban against openly gay men and women serving in the military, and today ratified a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia.

In addition to these headline achievements, the 111th Congress also:

– Passed the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, making it easier for women and other minorities to file equal-pay discrimination lawsuits.

– Overhauled the federal student loan system, eliminating billions of dollars of waste being paid to for-profit loan companies while expanding access to loans, especially for low-income students.

– Confirmed two Supreme Court nominees.

– Passed legislation to help Sept. 11 first responders deal with ongoing health problems.
– Expanded the Children’s Health Insurance Program to include an additional 4 million children and pregnant women, after the Bush administration denied funding increases for years.

– Passed child nutrition legislation, which expands the federal school lunch program and improves the quality of the meals.

– Enacted food safety legislation, which intends to improve safety measures and prevent food-borne illnesses.

– Approved a settlement for black and Native American farmers that were subject to discrimination by the USDA.

– Passed legislation strengthening the prosecution of hate crimes.

– Passed pro-consumer legislation further regulating abusive practices of credit card companies.

Brinkley also noted these achievements are “all the more impressive given how polarized the Congress has been.”

And yes, this Congress made a huge dent in the decades-long backlog of progressive legislation in this country.

The downside of that is the 111th Congress showed just how tremendously large that backlog has been allowed to become since the 60's.  Getting all that corrected in just two years was always going to be impossible.  Obama did over-promise, in some cases substantially (Gitmo, Iraq, Afghanistan, the stimulus).  He also came through on a number of things that were left for dead.

All of this will seem like the good times compared to the 112th Congress, however.