After seeing this YouTube video of Tom Price starting to read the “stimulus” bill—all thousand-plus pages of it—it hit me that there’s a fairly simple way to fix much of what’s wrong with Congress: force each representative and Senator to read every single bill they vote on in its entirety. Not staffers, but actual Congress members. To do this, we need a mechanism, and the best mechanism is probably the one that people are so used to: tests. As they hit the Yea or Nea buttons, they’ll be given a 10-question multiple choice quiz from portions taken from the bill. 5 questions will come from Republican staffers and 5 from Democratic staffers, and for bills longer than 5 pages, the questions will come from a pool of no fewer than 30 questions. If a Congressman cannot get seven or more questions right, their vote will be discounted. This would make gigantic, pork-tastic bills like the “stimulus” almost impossible to pass, and we’d all be better off.
February 13, 2009
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“No item introduced for consideration in either House of the Congress shall become law unless every Member of each House voting in favor of such item shall have sworn or affirmed, in writing and under penalty of perjury, that he or she has read said item in its entirety. Said oaths and affirmations shall be appended to the bill when it is presented to the President for his signature, and said item shall not have the force of law unless said item, when signed by the president, contains such oaths or affirmations.”
Comment by Diffus — February 15, 2009 @ 1:34 pm
That’s a good start, but the problem is that there’s no real enforcement mechanism. Given the seriousness of a perjury charge, I doubt that could ever be enforced, as the court (or impeachment) proceedings would quickly turn into a circus with a prosecution forced to prove that the defendant had not read a bill at the time of voting.
Comment by Kevin Feasel — February 16, 2009 @ 4:57 pm
[...] – More proof that we really need a mechanism forcing legislators to read what they’re voting on. [...]
Pingback by Political Notes « 36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! — April 11, 2009 @ 9:04 pm
[...] read and couldn’t possibly read because the bill is not even complete! We need a new Congress and new rules to stop this political malpractice. I don’t expect that to happen, though—the [...]
Pingback by Economics Notes « 36 Chambers – The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! — July 1, 2009 @ 7:02 pm