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I wouldn't mind if legislation automatically sunset after a maximum of 50 years. I don't know if Congress should renew the laws directly, or if it should be del

I wouldn't mind if legislation automatically sunset after a maximum of 50 years. I don't know if Congress should renew the laws directly, or if it should be delegated to a separate "old laws maintenance committee". Making Congress renew them might bog them down, or might encourage them to repeal as much as they can. A lot of problems could be solved all at once by restricting the interstate commerce clause to only commerce that directly occurs between states. That and the fallout from Roosevelt's "court-packing plan" mean that the federal government is currently far too powerful. These last two wouldn't really solve the problem you mention directly, but it would limit the impact of any particular legislation to just the states demanding it, and reduces the number of representatives needed to change it in the future.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> I wouldn't mind if legislation automatically sunset after a maximum of 50 years. You would end up having The Omnibus Reauthorization Act of [This Year] every year because many of the old laws are sensible or necessary but nobody actually wants to comb through them all and separate the wheat from the chaff. What might be interesting is to set the bar for passing laws higher than the bar for repealing them, the higher you go in government. So cities and counties would keep a simple majority while state governments would need 55% of the legislature to pass a law but only 45% to repeal it and at the federal level it might be 65% and 35%. That wouldn't solve the entire problem but it would help. A lot.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  That's a really good suggestion, because a politician with his "war paint" on with some specific issue in mind is tactically incentivized to target the smallest region that solves his problem. And hopefully the issue runs out of steam after that. Or, pass a constitutional amendment capping the allowed size of the US Code at 150 megabytes(and allow Congress to cap the aggregate size of all individual federal agencies' implementations of that law at, say, 10 terabytes): So if you want to add a kilobyte, you have to remove another kilobyte somewhere else.
- gruez 10y ago
  >What might be interesting is to set the bar for passing laws higher than the bar for repealing them, the higher you go in government. So cities and counties would keep a simple majority while state governments would need 55% of the legislature to pass a law but only 45% to repeal it and at the federal level it might be 65% and 35%. With the current 2 party system, this will only make gridlock even worse, since the opposition will always be able to undo the ruling party's bills. This is filibustering on a whole new level.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > This is filibustering on a whole new level. That's the idea. The only way you get anything passed at the national level is if most everybody agrees it should be passed at the national level. If you don't have the votes for that then you do it in your own state or not at all.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> I wouldn't mind if legislation automatically sunset after a maximum of 50 years. You would end up having The Omnibus Reauthorization Act of [This Year] every year because many of the old laws are sensible or necessary but nobody actually wants to comb through them all and separate the wheat from the chaff. What might be interesting is to set the bar for passing laws higher than the bar for repealing them, the higher you go in government. So cities and counties would keep a simple majority while state governments would need 55% of the legislature to pass a law but only 45% to repeal it and at the federal level it might be 65% and 35%. That wouldn't solve the entire problem but it would help. A lot.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
That's a really good suggestion, because a politician with his "war paint" on with some specific issue in mind is tactically incentivized to target the smallest region that solves his problem. And hopefully the issue runs out of steam after that. Or, pass a constitutional amendment capping the allowed size of the US Code at 150 megabytes(and allow Congress to cap the aggregate size of all individual federal agencies' implementations of that law at, say, 10 terabytes): So if you want to add a kilobyte, you have to remove another kilobyte somewhere else.
gruez 10y ago
>What might be interesting is to set the bar for passing laws higher than the bar for repealing them, the higher you go in government. So cities and counties would keep a simple majority while state governments would need 55% of the legislature to pass a law but only 45% to repeal it and at the federal level it might be 65% and 35%. With the current 2 party system, this will only make gridlock even worse, since the opposition will always be able to undo the ruling party's bills. This is filibustering on a whole new level.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > This is filibustering on a whole new level. That's the idea. The only way you get anything passed at the national level is if most everybody agrees it should be passed at the national level. If you don't have the votes for that then you do it in your own state or not at all.