In an arti­cle the The Atlantic Matthew Yglesias writes that:

Democrats no doubt see that more clearly today. Since 2006, when they won majori­ties in both the House and the Senate, their approval rat­ings have plum­meted, in large part because mod­er­ates and lib­er­als have noticed their inabil­ity to get much of any­thing done. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tried to blame “the obstruc­tion­ism of the Republicans,” but real­is­ti­cally, one can hardly blame Senate Republicans for obstruct­ing leg­is­la­tion they oppose. The fault lies not with the obstruc­tion­ists, but with the pro­ce­dural rule that facil­i­tates obstruc­tion. In short, with the filibuster—a dubi­ous tra­di­tion that encour­ages sen­a­tors to act as spoil­ers rather than leg­is­la­tors, and that has locked the polit­i­cal sys­tem into semi­per­ma­nent paral­y­sis by ensur­ing that impor­tant deci­sions are end­lessly deferred. It should be done away with.

In short, I agree with him here. Congressional lead­ers accom­plish far too lit­tle dur­ing their years in office and I think that remov­ing any incen­tive for them to delay leg­is­la­tion and become even more unpro­duc­tive ought to be removed. In addi­tion, we as a pop­u­lous need to be more demand­ing of our con­gress­men (and women) and hold them account­able for not accom­plish­ing anything.

Read the orig­i­nal Yglesias arti­cle (which is very good, and short for an Atlantic piece) here.