Comments about ‘Utah delegation's bills falter’

Good. The less bills the better.

In fact we should have to wipe out an old bill before a new one can take its place.

Especially at the state level where guys pass bills just for the sake of getting their name on something.

The passing of the bills has less to do with partisanship and more to do with the substance of the bills. After living in Ut my perception is that Ut is out of touch with the rest of the nation. I don't mean this as a negative comment. Just, it is what it is.

This perennial "legislative batting average" is an absurd, meaningless metric that provides no substantive analysis of Utah's Congressional delegation.

First, ranking members on a batting average scale ignores the content of the legislative proposals being put forward. It rewards good and bad legislative ideas equally.

Second, this imperfect baseball analogy implies that all bills are introduced with an equal expectation of passage. As Rep. Matheson noted, some bills are introduced to start a discussion or help shape the debate and can take years to actually become law.

Third, the incentive structure this type of ranking creates for the members of our delegation is counterproductive. It encourages members to introduce silly "feel good" resolutions while giving pause to the members who want to advocate more meaningful legislation. I'd much rather see my member of Congress introduce and advocate the big yet difficult reform ideas that our country actually needs rather than to see him pass countless "Under Water Basket Weaving Awareness Week" resolutions.

A congressional batting average might be a cute exercise for an 8th grade class as an assignment to rank members of Congress, but is not worthy of serious consideration in a paper such as the Deseret News.

Matheson has a lower score than Cannon. What's the point of keeping Matheson around?

This is the best news that I have heard about in a long time. Thank you for sharing.

Stories like this are informative as 68% of voters in the last election believe that the GOP is running congress. However that same 68% probably only reads the comic page.

What's so good about passing so many bills? If you're an activist Democrat who wants to run our lives and micromanage every aspect of it, then I guess reporters like Davidson who are fixated on lauding those who pass the most legislation are disappointed with those who don't pass very many bills. I say, horsehockey. As a Libertarian, I value those who pass the FEWEST bills as the best representatives around. We already have a monster government intruding everywhere. Now there's proposals to regulate what we eat. Where will it stop? I say, introduce 1 mammoth bill, to REPEAL all previous bad bills.

Utah out of touch? Right. Check out California and all of the other so-called right on, in touch states around the country. They are in deficit mode and whining to receive federal bailouts just like all the other failing institutions. My beef with all government entities is they need to seriously consider mandated balanced budgets, and forget about all these schemes to circumnavigate prudent financial principles to create funds for projects out of thin air; as in bonding, etc. and use creative (illegal) accounting methods to cover the mess. Talk about ponzey hokus pokus. The basic problem in politics is that politicians have created a polical elite/class,/rarely/leaving/office/ that is self perpetuating. We will never change things until the electorate gets organized on a grass roots basis across party lines, and orchestrates a term limitation concept everywhere. I am sick to death of all this partisan (nonpartisan is an oxymoron) behavior. Illinois politics is just the tip of the iceberg. We haven't seen the end of the financial problems because of this leveraged/deficit spending in government. Everyone is entitled to a home? Ridiculous! Unfunded spending....this is a lie, and everyone knows it. The actual debt is/above/50/trillion and rising.

I cant help but put my two cents worth. The arabs wasnt able to bring down our country by knocking down the twin tower in New York and various other crimes against us. But to increase the price of oil nearly did the evil deed. When the GOP said drill here and drill now they started to rethink their way of doing this unthinkable deed. Now the democrats said now we are not going to drill or do any thing for a permant fix to the problem. Well folks hang onto your hats and expect the price of oil to go thru roof. The price of gas to go to 20 dollars a gallon. Now how does that fix in your plans.

Lee Davidsons perennial batting average article is misleading and a disservice to the public. Journalists are supposed to inform us, but instead this article teaches that we should judge the effectiveness of members of Congress by how many bills they pass as a percentage of bills introduced.

Perhaps the biggest flaw here (and there are many) is the assumption that members of Congress are most effective by sponsoring and passing legislation. Since it will always be the tendency of government to grow, some of the most effective members of Congress use their time working against legislation, and convincing others to vote NO. They defeat the stupid ideas of members who are obsessed with pandering to constituents through news stories like this. These stories create the incentive for members of Congress to create fluff bills like those mentioned in the story (which are likely to pass), to write bills for things that are already set to happen, or to use legislation when the same ends can be better achieved through administrative means or negotiating in other ways.

Lee Davidson has been in the business long enough to know better. The Deseret News should be ashamed of such lazy and counter-productive journalism.