Huffington Magazine Issue 60 | Page 10

Enter passing a ton of laws. That’s not what the GOP base expects from its lawmakers. But the speaker can’t sit there on teevee and say that his metric for success is how many consecutive hours they spend twiggling their fudge tunnels with their thumbs, either, so Boehner reached for a different measurement: BOEHNER: Well, Bob, we should not be judged on how many new laws we create. We ought to be judged on how many laws we repeal. We’ve got more laws than the administration could ever enforce. All well and good, except that Boehner’s even worse at repealing laws than he is at enacting them, as Jason Sattler points out: Based on this metric, Boehner’s tenure is even more of a failure than judging him by the paltry number of bills the House has passed that have become laws. Though House Republicans have voted to repeal the whole of Obamacare nearly 40 times and the law’s employer and individual mandates once, those repeals will never be law. LOOKING FORWARD IN ANGST HUFFINGTON 08.04.13 They’ve never even been voted on by the Senate — and likely never will. Of course, despite all this, I actually think that if John Boehner had his druthers, his House of Representatives would be a lot more productive. The problem is that his House colleagues would take Boehner’s druthers out to the loading dock and set them on fire. It