The Problem

I often get angered at the way current legislators write bills and force random add-ons down our throats.

Jump back to 2015 when the house and Senate passed the omnibus bill, legislation that was meant to fund a large portion of our government. While it did exactly that, it also did something else. A bill which had repeatedly failed to make it through the legislative branch, CISA (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act), was bundled up with the omnibus bill and passed into law. For those of you that may not remember, you can read up on it here

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Information_Sharing_Act (Link in plain text for those that don’t trust hyperlinks.)

But long story short, it negatively affected the privacy of all Americans, and the world, and was disliked by Google, Apple, Reddit, and Twitter, just to name a few. Why is it that we live in a time where legislators are able to sneak amendments in to hide and fly under the radar, disgusting legislation that negatively affects Americans and goes against the very wishes of their constituencies.

A change

I think it may be time that we, as a nation, change the way we write laws. A bill should only include one specific topic. If a piece of legislation is meant to be about the budget, it should only be about the budget. If a bill is supposed to protect consumers from negligent investments of a commercial bank, then it shouldn’t also include some random legislation about farmers getting subsidies. Has that happened before? Probably not, but is it possible? Most definitely.

Bills should be straightforward and not have hidden agendas inside of them. This would negatively impact the ability for certain money interests to sneak in bills that the populace hates.

Now I do understand the opposite side of the debate. Putting multiple things into a bill brings down the amount of votes that need to happen. But it can also elongate the debate indefinitely.

One step further

Now let's go beyond this. What if it were possible to vote on specifics in a bill without passing the whole bill. While I do not think this could be changed in the law, it would be nice to see legislators start to write bills that make tiny changes, quickly. For instance, instead of taking 2 years to fight over a tax plan that completely overhauls the tax code, why not try to make tiny changes all at once.

Currently, in trumps tax plan, here.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/interactive/2017/09/27/read-gop-tax-plan-framework.html

It is a pretty simple read, no crazy jargon. There is much of the plan that I do not like, but there are some parts that I think are good. For example, I think it is a great idea to make it so that small businesses do not have to pay a 39.6% tax rate just because a small business has to file under the owner’s income. This can make a mom and pop shop struggle even harder to stand up to the chains that seem to be taking over everywhere. Instead, the mom and pop shop would pay a max of 25%.

How easy would it be to get this one piece of legislation through congress, and change it with little debate, instead of trying to force the whole thing through which will obviously get HUGE pushback from the left. I feel that piecing about legislation would be a great way for common sense ideas to be passed into law. Instead of common sense ideas getting lost in the bullshit and having to compromise bullshit for what we should already be part of the law.

This would also allow Americans to truly choose how they feel about specific parts of a bill. Currently, it feels like you have to weigh the pros and cons of the bad vs the good in a bill. If you only had to worry about the good and the bad individually, it would free up that feeling of, “Is this bill really worth it?”

What we have seen currently

One of Trump’s original ideas was to take a look at Dodd-Frank Act and see if it needed to be chucked out the window. Or so everybody cried about. What if instead of it being the Dodd-Frank act, it was the Dodd-Frank Act(s). Where specific parts of the law could be looked at, the populace would be able to understand more of what our legislators actually want to change, and people won’t be crying and freaking out before somebody even does anything.

Repeal a specific Act of the Dodd Frank Family, instead of trying to amend the act itself, causing confusion and adding bullcrap to the act that may have nothing to do with it. Let’s stream line the legislative process that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years. Let’s make it easy for the busy worker, regardless if they are upper class, middle class, or lower class, to understand the laws that affect our lives every day.

Discussion:

So what do you think? Do you think it could benefit our system? Is it way out there in left field and would not work even if legislators wanted to make it work?

Let me know and share your thoughts!