Clarity... Simplicity... Consideration

Yesterday I emailed my Senators and Representative and voiced my concern that there is a fundamental flaw in the system being followed right now in Washington. Bills are too big, they lack focus and clarity, and are being shoved through the system so fast that no one has time to read them. Waxman-Markey is a great example. I even put a video on the blog a while back where Waxman admits that HE didn’t know everything that was in HIS cap-and-trade bill. It’s frightening. These bills have far reaching and extremely significant impact on every American family and the people voting on them don’t even have a chance to read them. The citizens that these bills effect barely know they exist before they are being voted on by our elected officials. These things need to be out in the open, they need to be clear, they need to be limited to the subject at hand, and they need to be available for everyone to see and consider for at least some period of time.

Based on that I urged them to pursue the following reforms:

- Bills should be limited in scope to the actual issue that they are addressing. If a bill is about funding federal highways it shouldn’t contain ear marks for sea otter research. If sea otter research needs to be funded it should be able to stand on its own. No ear marks. No add-ons.

- Bills should be limited in length. Our elected officials are hopefully intelligent enough to be able to articulate their legislation in a hundred pages or less. Certainly some things are complicated and should require more details to truly be useful, therefore rare cases should be allowed to go upwards of five hundred pages, however…

- The length of the bill should be considered before voting. Bills that are a hundred pages or less should be in their completed form and available to the public prior to voting for at least a week. Bills exceeding a hundred pages (but still less than five hundred pages), should be completely compiled and available to the public for at least two weeks prior to a vote in either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

These three changes of limited scope, limited length, and minimum time, would allow the congressmen to be well informed and would give the public enough time to get involved in the process and contact their elected officials regarding bills that are important to them.

This is an important reform that needs to be made. Laws that are straight forward are hard to misinterpret and twist. Bills that are short and focused on a single issue don’t have room for loop holes, pork projects, or political favors. Ideas should be able to stand on their own merits.

Please email your elected officials and urge them to move forward with similar reforms. Here is the list of Senators and webforms to fill out requests. Here is a similar page to find your Representative and send them a message.