Just a few days ago I wrote:
1) Any bill put before the House and Senate must be read IN ITS ENTIRETY out loud before the House and Senate. Any Congressman/Senator who does not stay and listen to the entire bill – and *awake* the whole time – does not get to vote on the bill.
And then Representative John Conyers (D-Michigan… that tells you a lot, right there), cranks this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbwND52rrw
“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill.’ What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”
Hey, John. Dumbass. If the bill is so long that you need a team of lawyers to help you interpret it… VOTE AGAINST IT.
Why is this so fricken’ hard to understand?
7 Responses to “John Conyers makes my point for me”
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You think it can’t get any worse and then you hear something like that.
This has been the position of the Democrat Party for decades. Never mind what is being passed, just pass it and worry later.
Or, in the immortal words of Binder,”Everybody look at my head, look at my head, look at my head!”.
It would work better if I could put the video clip in, just does not quite translate to the written word!
Unfortunatly this isn’t only a ‘democrat’ problem but a real issue of time. EVERY Congress-person has a small part of their staff that “read-and-summerize” each bill coming up for a vote, and they usally vote from that summery. I’ve noted that the versions of bills being considerd on most websites are still not 100% complete versions even those that say they are :o)
(Then again the “average” person with access doesn’t have those “lawyers” on call either :o)
Of course, the way the “process” runs someone can have complete knowledge of the contents of a bill but the contents and attached “riders” can and are added and deleted right up until the bill is voted on. And even the system for notifying lawmakers of the changes and riders has a tough time keeping updated on changes!
And then there is the case of someone at some point changing wording or a paragraph which because it is “administrative” changes or corrections is not even reported at all.
I’m sure most folks here heard the flap over the “safety” portion of the Congressional Commercial Space Act, of which the wording had been hammered out for a couple weeks between Congressional comittiee’s and all the big names in Space Tourism, Commercial Space Flight, and New-Space activists?
For some reason one web-activist was reading the “final” version of the bill, and had found that it had ‘updated’ to a final version with administrative changes and correction. Short version- The bill went from allowing commercial space flight from approved “space-ports” and other “to-be-designated” areas with FAA approval, to ONLY allowing flights IF they launch provider was able to provide POSITIVE PROOF at 100% confirmability that POSITIVLY no-one anywhere in range of a possible launch malfunction could possibly be hurt, at all! IF this could not be shown then the FAA was mandated to refuse a launch permit with no recourse for the launch provider.
As worded the chance of any “new-space” or start-up launch provider of getting a launch permit was “impossible” at best. (The wording I recall seemed to me to cover every commercial launch provider but it was possible with other provision within the bill that the larger launch providers would just need some additional paperwork and would still be allowed to launch)
All this was done AFTER the “final” version of the bill had passed all comittess and other checks and just before the bill was to be submited for voteing, and NO-ONE was required to be notified of the changes!
Of course the internet and web-activist community went ballistic and people like Branson, Rutan, and Musk were on the phone to Washington burning up the telephone network demanding to know why the bill had changed and what Congress was going to do about getting it fixed.
The Bill was of course changed BACK to the pre-change wording, voted on and passed. The “blame” was laid on “un-named junior Congressional staff” who had been tasked with ‘cleaning-up’ the bill prior to the vote.
And as per ‘standard-procedure’ no one would have noticed the changes until the first company applied for a launch license. Which would have been way to late….
But it points out the process flaws, when someone can fairly easily change the entire direction of a bill about to become law by changing a few words :o)
Randy
Easily fixed. First step, ban lawyers from being involved in the process, either through being elected or hired by elected officials. Next, Bills will be no longer than 5 pages, single spaced, with standard width margins.
And require, upon pain of 5 years imprisonment and forfeiture of all pay and benefits, that all persons voting on a Bill not only read and understand it, they must explain the Bill and its effects/purpose to their constituents in a manner that any person of average intelligence can comprehend it. And when said constituents tell their Rep “No” that is the end of it, Bill goes into the trash and is never brought up again in any way, shape, manner or form. Period.
That should about clear up the problem.
2Hotel9:
We ought to give the convicted non-reading Representatives and Senators a choice – either the imprisonment/fine/pension-forfeiture as you laid out, or 500 lashes, given in public, distributed in lots of 50 at various landmarks around DC and their home District or State (what was once known as “Flogging around the Fleet”).
Feh. I disagree on the notion of legal action against reps who vote without reading. I’d simply put some sort of “deadman switch” or some such at their desk… they have to keep a hand on a scanner or somethign for a certain percentage of the time required to read a bill. If they don’t meet the requirement, they are simple cut out of the voting loop.
My goal is less to punish lazy governance than it is to *prevent* it.