WaPo Really Asking The Hard Questions
(media.communities.win)
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People talk about term limits for politicians, but what I'd like to see is term limits for laws.
Imagine if there was an amendment nullifying every law that isn't revoted for 10 years. Sure there would be giant omnibus bills that reupped everything, but at least there would be a process that could remove cruft. Is it really that much easier to hide stuff in a 20,000 page reauthorize than a 2000 page omnibus budget? Maybe a little but it's not like congressmen are actually reading these things anyway.
Maybe it would also make it easier to get rid of old good stuff like Sherman Antitrust, but with it not being enforced anyway maybe it's better to not even have it on the books pretending to be protecting us.
Both this and an amendment stating that bills must cover ONE topic only, no extraneous attachments, and be read in full out loud by the presenter before being voted on.
Forcing the sponsor to read any bills they propose (probably three times, maybe four; once to introduce to committee, once as amended in committee, once before the whole body as amended out of committee, and once before the whole body as amended from the floor) would be great, but I'd add the stipulation (as suggested in my other post) that if a congress critter isn't present for at least the entire final reading, they can't vote on the bill.
Make it so they cant vote yes. They may still vote no on bills they haven't read. Dont need to listen to everything to know something is a pile of shit.
I don't think that's really necessary, because as I understand it bills are passed based on the total number of 'Yes' votes, not the ratio of 'Yes' to 'No' votes. If you want to make what is functionally only a a political statement against a bill as a representative, I think you should be required to be aware of the content of that bill.
Requiring (most) laws to sunset if not passed again sounds like a brilliant idea, and I'm not sure there are any arguments against it beyond "it would just cause more gridlock in congress" (which I would generally consider to be a good thing) or "people would work around it so it'd be moot", but if there are I would love to see them.
The workaround to this (and other issues) is to ban bills greater than a certain length, and/or actually require the contents to be read by/in the presence of every congress critter before a vote (rather than allowing congress to waive those requirements.)
Awesome! so when dems or rinos are in power, every law protecting the people would be repealed.
Smart law.
The key laws protecting the people are the Constitution and Bill of Rights, which I would assume would be exempt from automatic repeal (or I wouldn't support the system), along with any other constitutional amendment. What additional legal protections do you think are needed (at least from the Federal government)?