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Congress was caught adding non related items to a "supply bill" (I am using uk nomenclature) This is highly undemocratic and should have be ruled out of order
by Mauricebranagh 6y ago
Congress was caught adding non related items to a "supply bill" (I am using uk nomenclature)
This is highly undemocratic and should have be ruled out of order and never even gone onto the order paper.
- pmyteh 6y agoThere's no requirement in Congress that amendments are germane to the purpose of the bill, unlike in the UK. This kind of 'Christmas tree' bill, where all kinds of personal favourite measures are added to some kind of must-pass legislation, is common. Having briefly interned in both Parliament and Congress, I'm not entirely sure which is the better/worse system. Parliament certainly wouldn't allow this - but then, if the government wants giveaway bills its basically got the power to put them through Parliament with little-to-no oversight. Where Congress has independence, it also has this kind of legislative log-rolling and low-level corruption. I prefer the UK system, but it's not clear-cut.
- whatshisface 6y agoIf the representatives were better, the pork mechanism could be used to escrow deals between parties with different interests. "I will pass this if you pass that" becomes a lot easier to organize when you can combine them together in a way that makes defection impossible. Unfortunately, this nice theoretical property is damaged in practice by the not-so-great behavior of the participants.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]