It’s probably better to measure legislation by something other than ‘number of bills passed’ because bills vary so wildly in absolute size, in degree of impact, and in where they fall on the scale from ‘passing this one is what we do every year’ to ‘Wow, somebody just punched the status quo in the face…’
Someone who has a knack for proposing pointless softball stuff of the ‘resolution affirming the importance and goodness of something uncontroversial, America, and puppies’ flavor can probably rack up a few without making the slightest difference to the operation of our republic.
The gimlet-eyed rules lawyer in the back, by contrast, might not have even ever been picked to co-sponsor something; but with a few adroit tweaks to the 350 pages of definitions in the effectively-certain-to-pass-defense-spending-reauthorization-act-of-something-something he can move mountains(or at least millions).
I’d be much nicer if bills actually covered discrete topics and were broken down in some vaguely sensible way; but crafting a set of rules of procedure that encourages that has proven difficult at best.
