6 ms·

It would be wonderful if Congress was not allowed to amend any bills. It seems to me that a major problem with our political system is adding pork to bills to e

It would be wonderful if Congress was not allowed to amend any bills. It seems to me that a major problem with our political system is adding pork to bills to either kill them or sneak in some unrelated legislation.

boombip 11y ago
That seems silly to me. Is every bill supposed to be perfect the first time? Amendments exist so that people concerns with a bill can be addressed. Getting rid of them would simply prolong the process of passing laws.
- jakejake 11y ago
  Perhaps in the house, but in the senate they're often used as a political tool rather than to address legitimate concerns with a bill. It's a shady way of making laws. Whether the ability to add amendments prolongs or delays the passing of laws, that's a tough one.
- bcassedy 11y ago
  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enf... "The Act was passed on the last day before Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections. According to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), no one on the Senate-House Conference Committee had seen the final language of the bill before it was passed.[4][5] The Economist has written that these provisions were "hastily tacked onto the end of unrelated legislation"." Edit to add: I agree that the ability to amend bills shouldn't be removed entirely, but it certainly needs an overhaul.
- beambot 11y ago
  > Getting rid of them would simply prolong the process of passing laws. Sounds good to me! If I ever run for office (ha!), I'd run on a platform of reducing the number of outstanding laws -- e.g. every new law passed requires two antiquated laws to be rescinded. Plus, as a side benefit, we could massively reduce the amount of quid pro quo pork added via amendments. Consider it the legal version of "My net programming contribution this week was -2000 lines of code." [1] [1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...
  - mangeletti 11y ago
    I would vote for you, based on that merit alone. I often hear people say things like, "If Republicans and Democrats (or the house and senate) could work together, they'd get a lot more done.", and I think to myself, "Is a 'productive' congress one that passes thousands of pages of legislation?".
    - Retra 11y ago
      You have to pass a law to repeal another one.
      - manicdee 11y ago
        Bills are like diffs. They are not law, they merely make changes to the laws that exist. Some bills will add new files to the working repository, others will delete files. The diff isn't the code.
  - vacri 11y ago
    "A law" is not like "a line of code".
    - beambot 11y ago
      That's a deeply insightful observation about my analogy... thanks! </s> The point was: Continuously bolting on new {law, code} tends to monotonically increase a system's complexity. Many people consider unnecessary complexity "bad." I'm one of those people.
      - vacri 11y ago
        Sometimes I just can't be bothered to spoonfeed the drones. That's not sarcasm. My point was that "a law" is not an atomic item like you think it is.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
nmrm2 11y ago
The rising popularity of anti-debt politics is having a huge impact on the amount of pork amendments that are introduced in Congress. Meanwhile, amendments now serve the purpose of attaching valence issues (i.e. hyped up issues that turn voters into idiots) onto any significant piece of legislation. See Congress now -- having trouble deciding whether Planned Parenthood funding is worth shutting down the entire federal government. But the solutin isn't getting rid of amendatory processes, because those processes aren't the root of any contemporary problem. Amendmory processes have been around since long before the US was even a country.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
JamesBarney 11y ago
Pork barrel spending is only 1% of national spending. This amount of "waste"[0] is hardly a large problem. It also serves a valuable purpose, it gets congressman to vote against their own interests to ensure a functional democracy. Pork barrel spending was used to pass both the Civil Rights Act, and to stop the recent government shutdowns. [0] - Most of pork barrel spending is not on bridges to no where but on research for diseases, local roads, police officers, VA benefits, emergency response to hurricane Sandy etc...
- icelancer 11y ago
  ...banning internet gambling as an attachment to the Safe Port Act (?)...
- earlyadapter 11y ago
  Happy to see someone who understands that pork barrel spending was THE currency Congressman had in order to secure votes needed for important bills. That is truly how compromise was achieved.
SilasX 11y ago
That wouldn't solve any core problem of governance: those bills are an artifact of members of Congress having constitutional power -- the right to vote against a bill. Given that they have that right, they also have the right to withhold it until they're bought off. If your proposal became law, Congress would still do these compromises, they would just pass the provisions on a different bill -- say, "vote for my bill and I'll later vote for your pork project in the next appropriation". All that would change is the difficulty of coordinating it. The fundamental problem is still there.
gherkin0 11y ago
I don't have a problem with amendments per se; but I do see a problem with tacking unpopular stuff onto an unrelated or must-pass bill. I wish there was some requirement that bills be cohesive.
Spooky23 11y ago
Only if you want the US president to have dictatorial powers. Consider the erosion of congressional oversight of military actions over that last 100 years. Do you think we'd have troops in combat all over the globe right now if Congress had to vote on the actions taking place? What congressman would vote to put Americans in danger to "train" the Nigerian army?
deciplex 11y ago
Of course Congress should be allowed to amend bills. Since Congress writes most bills of course they can amend them, if not directly then indirectly by scrapping one bill and introducing another, almost identical bill with the amendments. No amount of process-tweaking is going to make any difference if Americans keep electing stupid assholes to public office. Likewise, even a rather broken set of processes can be mitigated if they're administered by intelligent and reasonable people. (Now, for my pet idea :) What I would like to see, in addition to an electorate that doesn't make such terrible decisions, is a requirement that every bill have a falsifiable statement of purpose, along with clear and convincing reasoning why the proposed legislation might achieve that purpose. The purpose would always include some time limit. If the purpose of the bill is not achieved by the time the limit is up, then the bill is automatically repealed. If the courts (or some new institution analogous to the courts) determines the the reasoning is not clear, or the time limit is not reasonable (e.g. a million years to do X) then the bill is also repealed. But even that's going to break down, if administered by idiots.

boombip 11y ago

That seems silly to me. Is every bill supposed to be perfect the first time? Amendments exist so that people concerns with a bill can be addressed. Getting rid of them would simply prolong the process of passing laws.

jakejake 11y ago
Perhaps in the house, but in the senate they're often used as a political tool rather than to address legitimate concerns with a bill. It's a shady way of making laws. Whether the ability to add amendments prolongs or delays the passing of laws, that's a tough one.
bcassedy 11y ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enforcement_Act_of_2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_Internet_Gambling_Enf... "The Act was passed on the last day before Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections. According to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), no one on the Senate-House Conference Committee had seen the final language of the bill before it was passed.[4][5] The Economist has written that these provisions were "hastily tacked onto the end of unrelated legislation"." Edit to add: I agree that the ability to amend bills shouldn't be removed entirely, but it certainly needs an overhaul.
beambot 11y ago
> Getting rid of them would simply prolong the process of passing laws. Sounds good to me! If I ever run for office (ha!), I'd run on a platform of reducing the number of outstanding laws -- e.g. every new law passed requires two antiquated laws to be rescinded. Plus, as a side benefit, we could massively reduce the amount of quid pro quo pork added via amendments. Consider it the legal version of "My net programming contribution this week was -2000 lines of code." [1] [1] http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.txt http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Negative_2000_Lin...
- mangeletti 11y ago
  I would vote for you, based on that merit alone. I often hear people say things like, "If Republicans and Democrats (or the house and senate) could work together, they'd get a lot more done.", and I think to myself, "Is a 'productive' congress one that passes thousands of pages of legislation?".
  - Retra 11y ago
    You have to pass a law to repeal another one.
    - manicdee 11y ago
      Bills are like diffs. They are not law, they merely make changes to the laws that exist. Some bills will add new files to the working repository, others will delete files. The diff isn't the code.
- vacri 11y ago
  "A law" is not like "a line of code".
  - beambot 11y ago
    That's a deeply insightful observation about my analogy... thanks! </s> The point was: Continuously bolting on new {law, code} tends to monotonically increase a system's complexity. Many people consider unnecessary complexity "bad." I'm one of those people.
    - vacri 11y ago
      Sometimes I just can't be bothered to spoonfeed the drones. That's not sarcasm. My point was that "a law" is not an atomic item like you think it is.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]

nmrm2 11y ago

The rising popularity of anti-debt politics is having a huge impact on the amount of pork amendments that are introduced in Congress. Meanwhile, amendments now serve the purpose of attaching valence issues (i.e. hyped up issues that turn voters into idiots) onto any significant piece of legislation. See Congress now -- having trouble deciding whether Planned Parenthood funding is worth shutting down the entire federal government. But the solutin isn't getting rid of amendatory processes, because those processes aren't the root of any contemporary problem. Amendmory processes have been around since long before the US was even a country.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

JamesBarney 11y ago

Pork barrel spending is only 1% of national spending. This amount of "waste"[0] is hardly a large problem. It also serves a valuable purpose, it gets congressman to vote against their own interests to ensure a functional democracy. Pork barrel spending was used to pass both the Civil Rights Act, and to stop the recent government shutdowns. [0] - Most of pork barrel spending is not on bridges to no where but on research for diseases, local roads, police officers, VA benefits, emergency response to hurricane Sandy etc...

icelancer 11y ago
...banning internet gambling as an attachment to the Safe Port Act (?)...
earlyadapter 11y ago
Happy to see someone who understands that pork barrel spending was THE currency Congressman had in order to secure votes needed for important bills. That is truly how compromise was achieved.

SilasX 11y ago

That wouldn't solve any core problem of governance: those bills are an artifact of members of Congress having constitutional power -- the right to vote against a bill. Given that they have that right, they also have the right to withhold it until they're bought off. If your proposal became law, Congress would still do these compromises, they would just pass the provisions on a different bill -- say, "vote for my bill and I'll later vote for your pork project in the next appropriation". All that would change is the difficulty of coordinating it. The fundamental problem is still there.

gherkin0 11y ago

I don't have a problem with amendments per se; but I do see a problem with tacking unpopular stuff onto an unrelated or must-pass bill. I wish there was some requirement that bills be cohesive.

Spooky23 11y ago

Only if you want the US president to have dictatorial powers. Consider the erosion of congressional oversight of military actions over that last 100 years. Do you think we'd have troops in combat all over the globe right now if Congress had to vote on the actions taking place? What congressman would vote to put Americans in danger to "train" the Nigerian army?

deciplex 11y ago

Of course Congress should be allowed to amend bills. Since Congress writes most bills of course they can amend them, if not directly then indirectly by scrapping one bill and introducing another, almost identical bill with the amendments. No amount of process-tweaking is going to make any difference if Americans keep electing stupid assholes to public office. Likewise, even a rather broken set of processes can be mitigated if they're administered by intelligent and reasonable people. (Now, for my pet idea :) What I would like to see, in addition to an electorate that doesn't make such terrible decisions, is a requirement that every bill have a falsifiable statement of purpose, along with clear and convincing reasoning why the proposed legislation might achieve that purpose. The purpose would always include some time limit. If the purpose of the bill is not achieved by the time the limit is up, then the bill is automatically repealed. If the courts (or some new institution analogous to the courts) determines the the reasoning is not clear, or the time limit is not reasonable (e.g. a million years to do X) then the bill is also repealed. But even that's going to break down, if administered by idiots.