> There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. Actually, there is! The rea

> There's no reason in principle why they couldn't do their job while keeping the total amount of law constant or even reducing it. Actually, there is! The reason is because Congress can only make laws -- that includes laws that repeal other laws! Note how we still have the Eighteenth Amendment despite it being nullified by the Twenty-first Amendment. While there can be, in theory (and again, with such a large mass of people, it's really only in theory) laws whose sole purpose is to repeal other laws, such laws almost never make it to the President without a sizable layer of pork slathered on top in order to gather enough votes.