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

[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.