The Blessings of Inefficient Government

Below is a table that shows (on line 2) the numbers of bills and joint resolutions, i.e., bills that can become law, that were sent by the Texas Legislature to the governor for his signature by April 24 of the session in question. One thing that obviously stands out is that the Texas Legislature has reached a new low in 2017 with zero bills being sent to the governor at this point. The likely explanation for this is the fight for control between the House and the Senate which appears to be increasing each session.

However, before condemning one side or the other for whatever role it is playing in this standoff, it is well worth noting that the Texas Legislature has passed ZERO bills at this point. I know I already said that, but let’s look at it in a different way; the Legislature has passed ZERO bills that would somehow increase the government’s involvement in our lives. And since the vast majority of bills filed would increase government involvement in our lives, the current state of affairs with fewer of those bills passing should offer great comfort to conservatives.

Another way to look at this is that it is to the benefit of the people of Texas that the government be as inefficient as possible. We don’t generally think of it this way, but the Founding Fathers of both Texas and United States did. The designed the government to be as inefficient as possible. Today the concept is termed, “separation of powers.” But the basic concept was to make the central government as weak, i.e., inefficient, as possible. In the case of the colonials, it was because they had just rejected the rule of a tyrannical but efficient King and Parliament. In the case of the Texans who wrote our current constitution in 1876, it was because they had just experienced a decade of reconstruction under the relatively efficient thumb of the federal government.

Case in point. The last time the Texas Legislature was generally in liberal hands was 2001. And 2001 just happens to be the year when the Legislature was the most efficient early in the session, having sent the most bills to the governor by April 24. However, we can also see that in the ensuing years the Legislature passed even more bills overall than it did in 2001 (line 3). It was only when the current standoff really took hold in 2011 that the Legislature became more inefficient and the number of bills passed overall started to decline. Now, whether or not fewer bills means that the overall body of legislation has been more or less conservative awaits another analysis.

We can take heart in the fact that our Founding Fathers would support the current state of inefficiency of the Texas Legislature. It is our job as conservatives to beat the odds and ensure that as the chance of bills passing declines overall, the chance of conservative, free market legislation passing increases.