Yes, the Senate is ignoring hundreds of bills passed by the GOP House. But it’s always that way.

[applegrove]

Yes, the Senate is ignoring hundreds of bills passed by the GOP House. But it’s always that way.

By Philip Bump at the Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/08/08/yes-the-senate-is-ignoring-hundreds-of-bills-passed-by-the-gop-house-but-its-always-that-way/

"SNIP............................


One of the most frequent arguments offered by Republican members of the House of Representatives to demonstrate how hard they're working is to point out that there are over 300 bills passed by the House that are now waiting for action in the Senate. Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) mentioned them on "Meet the Press." Rep. David Jolly (R-Fla.) mentioned them when arguing that Congress should spend more time in session. (On which he has a point.) Potential 2016 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee mentioned them when discussing the impeachment of President Obama on the radio. Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.) even made a video about it.

....

The argument is often used to rebut claims that this is a "do-nothing" Congress, or, particularly recently, to counter Obama's insistence that he must act because Congress won't. And the thing is: Those Republicans are right. There are over 300 bills waiting for Senate action. But the other thing is: That's pretty much how things have always been.

We used data from GovTrack to assess the number of bills passed by the House that never saw action in the Senate. The site, which compiles data on legislation stretching back for decades, flags each bill by its current status. For hundreds of bills from each of the past 20 Congresses, the current status is what it was when the Congress adjourned: waiting for Senate consideration that will never come.

In 11 of the past 19 Congresses -- more than half -- more than 300 bills were waiting for Senate action by the time the Congress completed its work. Here's the number of bills passed by the House in each Congress that the Senate never took action on. And, anticipating your response, we've color-coded the bars with the color of the party that controlled the House during that Congress -- red for Republicans and blue for Democrats.




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[applegrove]

1. Are not 50 of those house passed bills all about repealing the ACA?

[newfie11]

2. +1