31–35 of 35 posts
Bills are a lot easier to understand if you think of them as source code diffs. This bill is basically requiring them to provide context diffs which is actually a pretty decent idea.
They should just make a law that requires all legislation to be hosted publicly on github.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you might not have read the article, because the proposal is rather simple and reasonable. Laws are often written with links to other laws that are required to understand them. Some laws are even "diffs" of other laws: "Paragraph 5 in law 65/1996 is removed, and the following paragraph is added instead: blah blah".* This means that you often need to open four or five different documents to understand a single…
From the article: ‘‘No Act shall be revised or amended by mere reference to it. Every bill or joint resolution which amends an existing section, subsection, or other subdivision of any Act shall set forth the section, subsection, or other subdivision sufficiently to enable the intent and effect of the bill or joint resolution to be clearly understood," the two-page bill states. First of all, any bill that can't be un…
Saying "we replace '5kg of solid gold' with '3kg of solid gold'" Instead of "we replace 5 with 3 here" makes it clearer.
If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.
So, no Federal Budget during your administration. While your at it, perhaps you want to look at the actual text density on federal bills.
The main side effect of having Congress micromanaging tens or hundreds of thousands of numbers is that everyone goes for pork. For example, everyone wants military bases in their home state. But with a smaller budget, you might just have a single item for "Military - Domestic Bases - $15 billion" (or whatever the actual number is) and let the military high command decide how many are actually necessary for national defense, where the best locations are, and whether it's better to have a lot of cheap ones everywhere or a few expensive ones in crucial locations.
And also, having a 2-year, 4-year or 8-year budget would make a lot of sense too. We can always write another law to repeal it if it's not working (or the next administration/Congress opposes the previous one's decisions), but we'll probably usually let it stand after we pass it. And it reduces waste if agencies know what they're going to get well ahead of time (especially for things like certain kinds of scientific research where you're running long-term experiments).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, no Federal Budget during your administration. While your at it, perhaps you want to look at the actual text density on federal bills.
Not as a monolithic bill. Modularity and delegation would be better. The main side effect of having Congress micromanaging tens or hundreds of thousands of numbers is that everyone goes for pork. For example, everyone wants military bases in their home state. But with a smaller budget, you might just have a single item for "Military - Domestic Bases - $15 billion" (or whatever the actual number is) and let the milita…
No, that's what we elect congress to deal with. We do not want the "permanent undersecretary" problem showing up in the US like it has in various other governments around the world. Its bad enough much of the regulation we have to deal with was never voted on by congress after seeing what the consequences of their legislation was. That's where the money is in government and what directly affects the voters.
Congress cannot pass anything over a two year budget because that would be unconstitutional.