Want to know why voters are so mad? Mia Love has the answer: Glenn Reynolds:
We’ve seen it over and over: Congress passes huge bills, like Obamacare or the recent omnibus spending bill, that contain hundreds of provisions, and occupy thousands of pages — or tens of thousands if you include the ensuing pages of regulations.
These bills are so long that literally no one has read the whole thing.
They’re not so much bills, really, as Christmas trees on which lobbyists and legislators hang their goodies.
A bill that’s so long that nobody can read it is, naturally, pretty likely to escape scrutiny.
With thousands of pages and hundreds or thousands of provisions in the bill, what’s the chance that any particular provision will be noticed or criticized?
And even if a few provisions are criticized, when they’re tied to a bill that rewards literally hundreds of constituencies, there’s not much chance they’ll be shot down.
Legislators, and special interests, have a vested interest in sticking together and being sure that the
whole bill passes.
Individually, most of these lousy provisions wouldn’t pass, but when banded together for mutual protection they can.
The result is something that doesn’t look much like the legislative process as we teach it in school. There aren’t hearings on each provision, there isn’t a lot of public debate, and there’s essentially no back-and-forth.
Often, most of the provisions are written by lobbyists and inserted by tame members of Congress. The public isn’t really represented at all.
That’s not an accident — it’s by design.
Enter Congresswoman Mia Love, a Republican from Utah. She wants to introduce a “single subject rule” to federal legislation.
Says Love, as quoted by the Deseret News: "Members of both parties have made a habit of passing complex, thousand-page bills without hearings, amendments or debate. ... That process and the collusion that goes with it are why we are $18 trillion in debt and why the American people have lost trust in elected officials."
Make the legislative process more transparent to the public
Importantly, the bill also provides for judicial review, allowing a court to strike legislation that doesn’t comply. And, in keeping with Love’s philosophy, the bill is just over three pages long.
Her bill,
H.R. 4335, would do the
following according to Love's congressional website:
- Require that each bill enacted by Congress be limited to only one subject;
- End the practice of attaching controversial legislation to unrelated, must-pass bills;
- Require the subject of a bill to be clearly state in its title;
- Make void in appropriations bills, general legislation that does not pertain to the underlying (appropriations) bill;
- Make the legislative process more transparent to the public
Importantly,
the bill also provides for judicial review, allowing a court to strike legislation that doesn’t comply.
And, in keeping with Love’s philosophy, the bill is just over three pages long...."
