[4RealFreedom]

I agree that I didn't use lame duck in the textbook definition but it does show the derogatory nature of not doing anything. Likewise congress would be called ineffective if they didn't pass laws. We often hear about gridlock when there's a balance of power with the 2 party system. I think saying 'deliberately designed to make doing something impossible' is an overstatement. Compromise is required. I see more and more that neither party wants to compromise, though. From my perspective, it's hard to talk about any Federal action that would be of benefit. Granted I'm jaded from seeing and being part of second order consequences. What kind of Federal action did you have in mind?

Edit I didn't address one of your points. You said the laws largely accomplished their purpose. What did you see as their purpose?

[Spooky23]

The Senate is a brake on change. In the most egregious example, the House passed anti-lynching legislation for 50 years, which never made it out of Senate committee.

Patriot act was ultimately designed to avoid the types of failures to coordinate that stopped the authorities from preventing 9/11 attacks. It was very successful at that aim, but created a bunch of other problems in the process. My statement isn’t an endorsement of it.

ACA reduced the number of uninsured individuals by 50%, eliminated a few key policy holes (ie pre-existing conditions) and slowed cost growth.

[4RealFreedom]

How successful was the Patriot Act? Without measurable benefits we can't really say. For the ACA, the numbers I'm seeing are much less than 50%. From the Kaiser Family Foundation "While uninsured rates decreased across all income groups from 2013 to 2016, they declined most sharply for poor and near-poor people, dropping by 9.7 percentage points and 11.4 percentage points, respectively." From that same source "In 2017, the uninsured rate reversed course and, for the first time since the passage of the ACA, rose significantly to 10.2%." You bring to the table an important point, though. We need measurable benefits. The fact that there's even guessing at the purpose of bills shows the flaw. We should require goals with every bill. Without that we just have bickering on specifics which, by design, have never been communicated. Politicians use this lack of information to their advantage.

Edit - source - https://www.kff.org/report-section/the-uninsured-and-the-aca...