Maguire’s First Law of Congressional Inaction
I’ve gone to the trouble of formalizing a rule of thumb helpfully supplied to us by the MinuteMan, Tom Maguire:
When faced with any issue of even moderate complexity, Congress will choose the path of least responsibility.
The law is especially predictive with issues involving national security. For examples, see the law applied to the Port controversy and the NSA story…
With the port story, Congress is in opposition because, should something untoward happen in one of the UAE-run ports, they want to be on the record as opposing the action that led to the next 9/11; in the case of the NSA story, Congress has declined to come out too strongly against the eavesdropping because they don’t want to be on the record opposing the action that could have prevented the next 9/11…so we can readily see the dual-edged power of the model at work…
Maguire’s first law
Mark Coffey formalizes an observation about Congress:
I’ve gone to the trouble of formalizing a rule of thumb helpfully supplied to us by the MinuteMan, Tom Maguire:
When faced with any issue of even moderate complexity, Congress will choose the…