Where Congress manages to excel

I have been known, from time to time, to draw attention to the fact that Congress is a dysfunctional mess, seemingly incapable of governing and completing basic tasks. But perhaps I've been too hasty -- there's one thing our legislative branch is apparently able to do quite well (thanks to my colleague Anthony Terrell for the heads-up).

Pillory Congress all you want as do-nothing or dysfunctional, as its critics often have. But in one respect, lawmakers in the Capitol are remarkably productive: they name post offices like nobody's business.

A new report from the Congressional Research Service, the nonpartisan research division of Congress, found that about 20 percent of laws passed in recent years were for naming post offices.

Yes, in the 112th Congress -- the one that wrapped up in January, before the start of the current Congress -- lawmakers successfully passed 240 statutes overall. That happens to be the lowest number since the U.S. House Clerk's office started keeping track in the 1940s. But if that weren't embarrassing enough, 46 of the 240 laws -- nearly 20% -- named post offices.

The House, where most of the measures naming post offices originate, has evidently become somewhat self-conscious about the amount of time it spends on the issue. So for this Congress, the 113th, the House committee that oversees the issue produced new guidelines that direct members to consider such bills expeditiously "so as to minimize the time spent."

That's fine, I suppose, but the concern isn't really that Congress spends too much time naming post offices, but rather, that Congress isn't doing enough other legislating. I don't think anyone would much care how many hours are spent on post offices if plenty of other worthwhile bills were becoming law.

But other bills aren't passing, and it has nothing to do with the time allotted for post-office naming.