There were numerous articles written in December about the record setting lame duck: 4 weeks long, record number of votes, and public acts.  But I thought a little context might be helpful in understanding just how busy the legislature was during this time. 

First, a refresher on some stats.

In 2018 there were 690 public acts and the House cast 1045 roll call votes while the Senate cast 1064. Breaking out the lame duck portion of those numbers, there were 341 public acts created from lame duck and the House cast 418 roll call votes and the Senate 478 during the same window.  That means in the record setting 4 weeks, the legislature passed 49% of the public acts for 2018, while the House cast 40% and the Senate 45% of their 2018 roll call votes all came during lame duck.

Now for some context.

The legislature’s “season” is 12 months, January through December and it completed 49% percent of its work in 1/12^th of the season. Each Major League Baseball team plays 162 games over a seven-month period, beginning in April and ending in October. So, what would the baseball season look like if 49% of the games were played in the last 1/12^th of the schedule? Each team would have to play 79 games in 17.5 days.  I don’t know what would be more difficult, being a player under those circumstances or being a season ticket holder and having to consumer 49% of a season’s worth of beer and hot dogs in just over 17 days.

Let’s go to the fans stat sheet for that one.  Estimating 2 dogs and 3 beers per game, the season ticket holder would consume 78 hot dogs and 117 beers in 17 days. 

While that quantity of hot dogs and beer would devastate anyone’s diet, what’s the take-away on the record setting lame duck?  While there are serious questions as to how much a legislator can read and understand in a given day, the opinion of those outside the chambers often rests on where they stood on legislation.  If someone wanted a bill to pass, it was a good session, if they didn’t, it was a bad session. 

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