Make a rule, resolution or law that requires all contents and amendments of a particular legislative bill include ONLY items that actually pertain to the actual purpose or title of the bill.
The House of Representative does NOT allow it's members to attach riders to pieces of legislation that are not "germane" to the purpose or title of the proposed bill after it is placed on the floor for debate but we should take this one step further and prevent the individual committees from both the Senate and the House from doing this as well.
Comments (4)
I encourage everyone who supports this idea, join DownsizeDC, they have the One Subject at a Time Act already written and just need people to pressure their congress members to sponsor it, so it gets to the floor for a vote. They also have the REad the Bills Act and the Write the Bills Act, where only members of congress would be allowed to write legislation, no more lobbying orgs or businesses or NGOs writing legislation which congress then votes on without reading.
why not make this retroactive?
This is a nice idea but there is unfortunately no simple semantic calculus to determine whether something is related to the core idea or not, nor in fact any way to discern the true core idea of a bill. Our government is large enough and that for the sake of efficiency our congress must often pass omnibus bills.
Basically, good idea, but not practical. A waste of time. So long as there is a will to circumvent the rule, the rule will be meaningless. The only effective remedy is for the people to pay attention to their congress critters, which is *ahem* unlikely.
I personally think that it's these "riders" that SLOWS the process down and prevents otherwise good legislation from being passed.
It's easier to focus and cast a vote on one topic rather than two or three or more separate issues.
I know some of our representatives in DC don't act too intelligent at times I still think the committees (as a group) can figure out what contents are true to the original intent of the bill and toss out the minutia.