Coolidge Blog

The Mellon Plan: The Legislative Fight for the First Supply-Side Tax Reforms

By The Honorable French Hill Tax reform isn’t easy, but it is possible. Even dramatic tax reform. Today, when many doubt that proposition, it’s useful to look back at another […]

Calvin Coolidge and the Post-Armistice Chlorine Gas Campaign

By Robert M. Klein, M.D., Columbia University Irving Medical Center On May 18, 1924, First Congregational Church in Washington held its regular service. But this Sunday, one important congregant was […]

GRACE: ON THE AIR

GRACE COOLIDGE’S RADIO DEBUT OVER STATION NAA ON DECEMBER 4, 1922 By Jerry L. Wallace Next year is a centennial year for President Calvin Coolidge. But this year marks a […]

The Great 1928 Budget Debate

We tend to project our own assumptions about party positions onto events long past. For example, we assume that Democrats always advocated for increased government spending, at least more so […]

Kill Bad Bills

February 20, 2014

The more legislation, the better.

That’s the attitude of most Americans these days. After all, it’s not uncommon to hear lawmakers get criticized for “doing nothing.” But Coolidge viewed doing nothing as a virtue – at least when it came to legislating.

As early as 1910, the Massachusetts politician started to voice concerns about a surfeit of laws. This shows in a letter the younger Coolidge wrote his father John, who was a new senator in Vermont. “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones,” the 38-year old Coolidge counseled his 65-year old father.

Later, Coolidge raised the point again: “Don’t hurry to legislate,” he told fellow lawmakers when he became president of the Massachusetts senate.

2 Responses to “Kill Bad Bills”

  1. thanks for sharing this amazing information. I was in need of that. Keep posting and sharing.

  2. Heidi A.

    This quote really got me thinking, and it’s very relevant to today’s political scene. Thank you!

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>