CONGRESS LEAD BY BOEHNER MOST UNPRODUCTIVE SINCE 1940

112th Congress Set To Become Most Unproductive Since 1940s

EXCERPT

WASHINGTON -- As 2012 comes to a close, the 112th Congress is set to go down in American history as the most unproductive session since the 1940s.

According to a review of all the bills that hit President Barack Obama's desk this session, Obama has signed 219 bills passed by the 112th Congress into law. With less than a week to go in the year, there are currently another 20 bills pending presidential action. In comparison, the last Congress passed 383 bills, while the one before it passed 460.

While Obama has signed several pieces of large, consequential legislation in the past two years -- such as sanctions on Iran and the National Defense Authorization Act, allowing the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without charge -- many of the bills passed by Congress have been small and noncontroversial.

At least 40 bills, including ones awaiting Obama's signature, concerned the renaming of post offices or other public buildings. Another six dealt with commemorative coins.

Meanwhile, significant pieces of legislation that have traditionally received bipartisan support -- such as the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act -- have been blocked.

House Republicans have also held votes to repeal Obamacare more than 30 times since gaining control of the chamber in 2011, despite the fact that such a measure has no chance of passing the Democratically controlled Senate or being signed by Obama.

When asked for comment on the record of the 112th Congress, Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), pointed to the 115 times the Republican minority has held up a bill's passage by threatening to filibuster it. House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) office did not return a request for comment.

The lack of bipartisanship in Congress has been lost on no one. In April, Thomas Mann of the left-leaning Brookings Institution and Norm Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute published a Washington Post op-ed saying that the GOP deserves the blame for the dysfunction.

Congress' approval rating currently stands at 18 percent.