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

[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.