Emma
Evil Liberal Leftist
In all, the 110th Congress introduced nearly 3,000 resolutions and passed more than 1,000.
Read more: Congressional Resolutions - TIME
Of the 911 total measures, only 376 were legally binding bills and joint resolutions, according to the CRS report. The rest were simple and concurrent resolutions. Occasionally these non-binding resolutions inspire some controversy, but a look through the full list provided by CRS confirms that the vast majority are ceremonial or symbolic in nature. An example is a resolution "congratulating Charles County, Maryland, on the occasion of its 350th anniversary." Others from the CRS report include:
• A resolution commending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln women's volleyball team for winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Women's Volleyball Championship.
• A concurrent resolution honoring the memory of Napa Valley winemaker Robert Mondavi.
• A concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the District of Columbia Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run.
We'll take the alternate approach. We started with the 376 legally binding measures (that is, the bills and joint resolutions). Then we looked closer.
Of the 376, 88 were naming bills for U.S. Postal Service facilities -- legislation that, while legally binding, is almost always non-controversial and treated as pro-forma business by the House and the Senate. According to CRS, all of the naming bills passed by unanimous consent. Because these bills are not the kinds of measures requiring substantive debate, we'll subtract them.
That gets us down to 288 bills. Another 30 passed by unanimous consent re-named a federal building, park, office or highway after someone -- another common category of bill that rarely if ever inspires debate. And four additional bills that were passed by unanimous consent addressed what seem to be non-controversial issues involving U.S. coins.
That leaves 254 bills. We could scrutinize the CRS list for other non-controversial bills passed by unanimous consent, but we'll stop there; once you get beyond common categories like building namings, it gets tricky to determine whether a bill addresses a major, debatable issue just by its title, which is all that CRS lists.
So, stopping here would define our universe of legally binding, non-naming, non-coinage bills at 254.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/17/jim-demint/demint-says-94-percent-bills-are-passed-unanimousl/
Of the 911 total measures, only 376 were legally binding bills and joint resolutions, according to the CRS report. The rest were simple and concurrent resolutions. Occasionally these non-binding resolutions inspire some controversy, but a look through the full list provided by CRS confirms that the vast majority are ceremonial or symbolic in nature. An example is a resolution "congratulating Charles County, Maryland, on the occasion of its 350th anniversary." Others from the CRS report include:
• A resolution commending the University of Nebraska-Lincoln women's volleyball team for winning the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I Women's Volleyball Championship.
• A concurrent resolution honoring the memory of Napa Valley winemaker Robert Mondavi.
• A concurrent resolution authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the District of Columbia Special Olympics Law Enforcement Torch Run.
We'll take the alternate approach. We started with the 376 legally binding measures (that is, the bills and joint resolutions). Then we looked closer.
Of the 376, 88 were naming bills for U.S. Postal Service facilities -- legislation that, while legally binding, is almost always non-controversial and treated as pro-forma business by the House and the Senate. According to CRS, all of the naming bills passed by unanimous consent. Because these bills are not the kinds of measures requiring substantive debate, we'll subtract them.
That gets us down to 288 bills. Another 30 passed by unanimous consent re-named a federal building, park, office or highway after someone -- another common category of bill that rarely if ever inspires debate. And four additional bills that were passed by unanimous consent addressed what seem to be non-controversial issues involving U.S. coins.
That leaves 254 bills. We could scrutinize the CRS list for other non-controversial bills passed by unanimous consent, but we'll stop there; once you get beyond common categories like building namings, it gets tricky to determine whether a bill addresses a major, debatable issue just by its title, which is all that CRS lists.
So, stopping here would define our universe of legally binding, non-naming, non-coinage bills at 254.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/jun/17/jim-demint/demint-says-94-percent-bills-are-passed-unanimousl/