does congress really suck?
I believe that there is a great need for simple, accessible data visualizations. There’s plenty of data out there, but unless we collect, organize, and simplify it, we’ll never unlock its true potential. The purpose of this site is to take a simple question, find the kind of data that might be helpful in answering it, and present it in a way that’s easy to understand and looks clean on every device, for any person. I make no conclusions on my part—I leave that up to the reader.
“Does Congress Really Suck?” The question has been thrown around a lot lately. Following the fiscal cliff debacle, the Speaker of the House, Mr. John Boehner, has taken considerable criticism for his lack of leadership in the House of Representatives. Some of it is deserved, but certainly not all of it. I decided to take a more holistic look at whether or not the current Congress (mostly the House of Representatives) really does suck, and if so, why. My research is presented here in four parts:
- A simple evaluation of this Congress’s efficacy, compared to previous sessions, to see whether they suck.
- Some findings about the relationship between recent increases in political donations and the content of legislation being passed to see how much Congress’s goals and productivity are being influenced by donors.
- A statistical determination of whether partisanship, a leading cause behind impotent sessions of Congress, has actually increased during the past couple sessions.
- A real-time look at the general public’s opinion of Congress through social media.