With approval ratings somewhere below Nickelback and root canals, Congress is hardly America’s favorite institution. The American public certainly seems to view gridlock and shutdowns dimly, and there’s a popular notion that the best measure of whether Congress is doing its job is whether it’s passing a large number of laws. “More laws good; fewer laws bad,” according to this view.
That framing might not be accurate – more on that later – but the number of enacted and introduced laws has certainly trended downward over time.
