Downsize DC

| 1 Comment
Nice idea -- from the DownsizeDC website:
Help us pass the �Read the Bills Act� (RTBA)
You can read the text of RTBA by clicking the Draft Legislation tab above, or you can start by reading a summary of the legislation below. Following that summary is a description of our strategy for passing RTBA, and then a call to action.

Part 1: What RTBA does and why:
Most Congressmen are lawyers, and many others are businessmen. They know what �fiduciary responsibility� is. For Members of Congress, fiduciary responsibility means reading each word of every bill before they vote.

But Congress has not met this duty for a long time. Instead...
  • They carelessly pass mammoth bills that none of them have read. Sometimes printed copies aren't even available when they vote!

  • Often no one knows what these bills contain, or what they really do, or what they will really cost.

  • Additions and deletions are made at the last minute, in secrecy.

  • They combine unpopular proposals with popular measures that few in Congress want to oppose. (This practice is called �log-rolling.�)

  • And votes are held with little debate or public notice.

  • Oh, and once these bills are passed, and one of these unpopular proposals comes to light, they pretend to be shocked. �How did that get in there?� they say.

There's a basic principle at stake here. America was founded on the slogan, �No taxation without representation.� A similar slogan applies to this situation:

�No LEGISLATION without representation.�
Interesting idea -- rabbit's chance in hell that it will actually pass in an effective form but it would be nice... I have run into a lot of cases where someone asks their congresscritter about something and they get a form letter back saying that the politician in question "will look into it".

1 Comment

Almost the perfect plan. I would add that for every new bill passed, one old law gets repealed.

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