World Perspectives

Decline in Lawmaking

Yesterday’s discussion about impeachment raised the question about its impact on the ability of Congress to simultaneously accomplish other legislative objectives. The average over the past quarter century is for 4 percent of the bills introduced into a Congress to ultimately be enacted into law. However, the success rate has been declining (see graph below). There could be several reasons for this decline: • More divisive politics; • Increased use of omnibus vehicles that package together many smaller bills; • Increased use of regulations in lieu of more Congressional acts; and • Simply running out of new things to legislate. It is somewhat unfair to say since it can take two years to move a bill through the...

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From WPI Consulting

Illuminating the value of technical research

On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.

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