A modest proposal

[unixronin]

This idea came to me during the course of a recent comment thread, and I want to toss it out to a wider audience.  The subject of discussion was the malfeasance of Congress, including the practice of full floor votes on huge, multi-hundred-page bills only a few hours after they come out of cimmitte, before anyone can possibly have read them to know what they're voting on and know what lies buried in the small print and sub-paragraphs.

Suppose the rules and procedures for passing bills through Congress were modified by adding a provision such that whenever a bill is presented for a floor vote in the House or Seante, opponents of the bill have the option of challenging supporters of the bill to prove that they actually know what they're voting for.  They would do this by selecting a number of supporters (who may not be authors) of the bill to quiz on the content of the bill for a reasonable period -- say, not to exceed one hour.  If it becomes generally apparent during the course of this challenge that the bill's supporters are not actually familiar with its contents, then the bill must be remanded for further study by that house for a period of not less than (say) three days, during which the members of the body voting on the bill are expected to actually READ it.  This procedure may be repeated each time a bill is presented for a floor vote.

It should prevent the congresscritters being able to blindly pass a rubber-stamp vote on bills that they've merely glanced at the summary of, or have simply been told to support.  On the other hand, if they really have read the bill, and know what they're voting on, then it will not delay the bill by more than an hour.  It may also provide some slight discouragement to the nonsense of "This bill just failed in a floor vote, so we're going to vote on it again right now, and we'll keep on bringing it back and voting on it back-to-back until it passes."

Thoughts?  Flames?  Rotten fruit?

Comments

[bbwoof.livejournal.com]

I like it.

The problem is, how are we going to get Congress to adopt it? The Constitution* allows the Congress to conduct their business in any way that they see fit.

* Depending on one's point of view, the Constitution is an outmoded document, just a piece of paper, or the social contract whereby the government gains legitimacy.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Aye, that is exactly the problem, isn't it?

[attutle.livejournal.com]

Downsize DC (http://www.downsizedc.org/) has been pushing for something similar, called Read the Bills Act (http://www.downsizedc.org/rtba_legislation.shtml)

Sign up, instruct your representatives to sponsor it.

Partial quote:

"To require before final passage of any Bill the printing and full verbatim reading of the text of such Bill, and each and every amendment attached thereto, to each house of Congress called to order with a quorum physically assembled throughout, the entry of such a printing and reading in the journal of each house of Congress, and the verbatim publication of every such Bill, and each and every amendment thereto, on the official Internet web site of the Senate and the House of Representatives at least seven days before floor consideration and final passage of any Bill, and each and every amendment thereto by each house of Congress; and to provide for enforcement of the printing, reading, entry, publication, recording and affidavit requirements herein."

[beckyzoole.livejournal.com]

AIUI, there are so very many bills, which are so very verbose, that it may well be physically impossible to read them all out loud on the Senate floor.

As long as congresscritters have good, competent staffers who prepare good, competent summaries... I don't think we have to require each and every representative to read each and every bill in its entirety.

HOWEVER, perhaps we could require that every bill come complete with its own official summary, prepared by non-partisan staffers? This would be useful to the general public, as well.

[ilcylic.livejournal.com]

Wait, why are you objecting to slowing down the rate at which Congress passes laws? Or, alternately, to forcing Congress to pass laws which are less obfuscated?

-Ogre

[cymrullewes.livejournal.com]

I think that's the best bit. forcing Congress to pass laws which are less obfuscated because that means everyone else can read it too and know exactly what their congresscritters are doing with the power the people elected to give them.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. I'd like to see Congress required to comply with a rule that basically says if they can't write a bill in plain English such that the average person on the street can understand it, then they may not write it. Period.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Do you mean that laws should be written in the same clear language that the constitution is written in? But, how would the lawyers react to that? (horror!) I mean, if that were true, most people would not really need a lawyer for mundane things.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I don't have a major problem with that. :) I have little doubt it would reduce the caseload on the courts and unclog the court system.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

AIUI, there are so very many bills, which are so very verbose, that it may well be physically impossible to read them all out loud on the Senate floor.

Then Congress is passing too many bills. Period. It's that simple. If they're writing so much law that they don't have time to read what they've written before they vote on it, then they're writing too much law.

"That government is best which governs least." The reverse is also true.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

Please be fair. There are 300 million people in this country. That generates a lot of issues that need to be taken care of. Congress already has far too many things that just happen, year after year, without their input. Forcing them to vote on renewing legislation is a good thing. Also, there is some bad stuff that needs cleaning and new stuff that needs seeing to. Society changes, people change, generations go by. The day to day stuff needs changing to accommodate those changes. There is a lot to do. (Just because we disagree on what needs to be changed does not mean that nothing should be changed.)

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Oh, sure, all of this is true. But they make far too much law that, when all the fluff is out of the way, only really has one true purpose: To make them look good on the evening news. "I, your representative, passed [this utterly worthless, feel-good, do-nothing pile of unenforceable paper] today!"

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

The Congress gets away with murder because the electorare permits it.

Whack on Congressional reform all you like, but until the voters vote rationally, it probably won't help much.

Though I do like attutle's pointer to the proposed read the bills act (http://www.downsizedc.org/rtba_legislation.shtml).

[7leaguebootdisk.livejournal.com]

I am not so sure that would work, even if they cut the amount they passed dramatically, I don't think it would be reasonable to try and read it all. I do think some way to force bills to be single issue (or related issues), rather than one big bill, and a bunch of random crap stuck on it.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

I'd like to see that too. Require bills to address a single issue or a group of closely and clearly related issues, and not permit any non-germane amendments or riders whatsoever. If your pet piece of legislation can't pass on its own merits, then you shouldn't be able to sneak it in by tying it to the coat-tails of some "must pass" bill.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

There are already some laws to that effect. The problem is that we keep electing lawyers to congress. Lawyers are really god at getting around inconvenient laws. (I have the ability to justify almost anything, a congress critter should have little trouble convincing a committee that his amendment is related.)

That said, I think requiring relevance to the primary bill would solve most problems, especially if it is rigidly enforced.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Relevance and agreement, I think. There's too much of a habit of trying to kill bills that the opposition knows they can't defeat in debate by attaching a "poison pill" rider diametrically opposed to the intent of the bill, and at present they can do it without the consent of the authors.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Actually, let me clarify that a little: Revision or modification, I think, to tune the bill, should be done in debate, and an amended version presented by the author(s) if necessary, or amendments to address omissions offerd to the bill and accepted by the author(s) either intact or to be incorporated. If there is a consensus that a bill goes too far, then by all means attach an amendment limiting its authority or power. But it should not be possible to kill a bill to, say, establish a geographically varying minimum wage that is sensitive to actual cost of living by three opposed representatives attaching a rider without the consent of the author(s) that makes Zoroastrianism the official religion of the United States and removes the religious non-profit status of all others.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Laugh.

NO ONE read the abortion also known as The PATRIOT Act.

Was this prompted by the quote from the congresscritter who didn't know the first fucking thing about teh internets but voted with the big telecoms on the Net Neutrality bill? Fuckwit.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

Not specifically, but it's part of the pattern. It actually came out of the comments on this post (http://unixronin.livejournal.com/359831.html).