Proposed amendment: single subject bills

[TechBear_Seattle]

Yeah, yeah, snowball's chance, but still...

I propose that the United States Constitution be amended to include this passage, based on Article II, Section 19 of the Washington State Constitution:

No bill passed by Congress shall embrace more than one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

The idea is to prevent Congress from passing, say, an emergency aid package to hurricane ravaged cities, that also includes spending for a bridge project in Alaska and a retroactive authorization for illegal domestic spying. Would you support such an amendment? Please explain why.

[Selatius]

1. Yes. I'll give one example.

Let's say you want to pass Patriot Act II.

Somebody with a lot of power and a lot of politicians in his pocket wants that bill passed. What does he do? He calls up one of his politicians on Capitol Hill to request that one of them insert an amendment that declares support for US troops in combat. The amendment is added in.

Now, anybody who votes against Patriot Act II is considered against the troops and is anti-American as a result.

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. That is exactly the nonsense that needs to be stopped

[bullimiami]

2. and i would require every bill to be read on the floor,

no more 'considered as read'.

that would keep them down to a size that people can understand and eliminate sneaking in all sorts of things.

[BlueEyedSon]

4. When you get to the nitty gritty, t's a matter of opinion, unfortunately

[Quiet_Dem_Mom]

5. We have that requirement for our state bills.

However, it seems to be open to a pretty wide interpretation of what the "one subject" is. Like "an act relating to laws". I don't think I've seen a bill with that broad of a subject, but it's gotten close.

A requirement like that would certainly make it harder for sneaking in anything like your examples suggest, but it may not eliminate the problem completely.

QDM

[CrispyQ]

6. I completely agree.

I'm sick of the sneaky way they put their pork projects into bills.

[onenote]

7. what constitutes "one subject" and who decides?

Sometimes it would be easy..but other times, not so clear...

[cascadiance]

10. This would be my biggest concern...

I'm very much for this idea in principle to avoid the "pork" stuff being thrown together, but what appropriate granularity is then defined that congress critters need to follow? Some various related items SHOULD be bundled together. If we didn't, we'd have piecemeal approaches to everything, and sometimes things that need to be put together and get voted separately (like the spending part of a bill and the part that gets revenue to pay for something), and then things break down when people become big "spenders" but don't want to have their commitments towards paying the bills for something.

Not only that, but to do perhaps 10 or more times as many votes to vote for each issue separately might serve as a bottleneck towards getting any thing passed.

Perhaps we could have some general rules (that if written properly) would help that related items REALLY DO have to be related to the bill at hand, and not just additional riders that aren't related at all. I think it's all in the language of the proposed rule that would say whether I think it would be a good idea or not.

But trying to add extra rules can break down too. When Republicans earlier were trying to push through line item veto for presidents (when they were in power of course), and make it for budgetary items only. That of course would allow Republican president to selectively nix spending money on some part of a bill, but wouldn't allow Democrats to selectively go after "social engineering" riders, which Dems might be more inclined to do, like the Communications Decency Act was for the Telecommunications Bill back in the 1990's.

[MADem]

8. I have felt that this is important for YEARS--now, the trick is to find

a way to tout it. The challenge is that once folks get up to the Hill in either chamber, they see how they can slide their pet project into a bill, and thus, they are disinclined to screw themselves out of opportunities to stealthily bring home the bacon.

If they could even be forced to toss all the pork into a single bill, that would be a start. It could become known as the Ham Law, or the Bacon Bill!!!

[zbdent]

9. How about a "Truth in Advertising" bill for Congress?

all their bill titles really have to reflect the true nature of the bill, as opposed to a market-tested, happy, flag-waving acronym painstakingly researched by the PR dept. . . .