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Plus these giant bills are rife with pet projects and unrelated spending. The Coronavirus bill spent a small amount on COVID and somehow included an $86 billion
by seibelj 6y ago
Plus these giant bills are rife with pet projects and unrelated spending. The Coronavirus bill spent a small amount on COVID and somehow included an $86 billion pension bailout https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-billion-bailout-to-failing-union-pension-plans.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/08/covid-relief-bill-gives-86-b...
This is politics as usual and no one seems to care about fiscal restraint anymore, so who cares anyway.
- merpnderp 6y agoThey’ll care a whole lot when rates get up to a mere 4-5%.
- mywittyname 6y agoI feel like our Congress is too small given the size of the country. Individuals in Congress wield incredible amounts of power and they leverage that power into personal gain. If Congress were 4,350 or even 43,500 members strong, I suspect that we'd see a large reduction in wasteful spending / bribes because individual Congresspeople would wield less than 10th or 100th of the power they do now. People wouldn't be adding a billion here or a billion there to get that one more vote they need to get the bill passed.
- mistermann 6y agoI would like if we could at least start having a conversation about something like: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
- burlesona 6y agoThis is a good point. You might enjoy Lee Drutman's book, "Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop," where one of his key observations is that fixing the size of the House has distorted representation in Congress and contributed to hyper partisanship. He recommends increasing the size to 700 representatives (IIRC) based on the "Wyoming Principle," the idea that every state gets at least 1 representative in the house and thus each representative should be representing approximately the population of the least populous state.
- jimbokun 6y agoThat’s a simple but brilliant solution.
- geitir 6y agoWouldn't giving states more legislative power and reducing specifically federal government be a solution? There are arguments that humans will mismanage anything past a certain point of comprehension, I think 1.2 trillion dollars definitely falls into that category, I don't care how smart you are. Regardless I agree that a big issue is not enough heads are making these decisions.
- nyczomg 6y agoI've joked with friends, that if I someday get some free time I want to start a movement to get The Congressional Appointment Amendment ratified. Did you know that at one point it was only 1 state away from ratification? And had it been ratified, we would have around 6,000 representatives in the house today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Amendment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Apportionment_Am... Care to join my movement?
- dragonwriter 6y agoWhile I agree thar Congress should be somewhat larger, there is the problem that rhe bigger it is, the bigger the internal power differentials will be, which increases high-corruption-risk influence points.
- kiba 6y agoI think it will increase pork, because every congresscritter is a gatekeeper and their job is to bring home the bacon.
- dillondoyle 6y agoI don't think I agree with the outcome you suggest, but I do agree with increasing more Congressional reps. the per /capita has been much lower in the past. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-population-keeps-growing-but-house-of-representatives-is-same-size-as-in-taft-era/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/31/u-s-populat...
- post_break 6y agoI hate that all bills are this way now. They can't pass a single issue bill any more, it has to be this giant tar ball where everyone tries to stuff as much as they can into it.
- Yoofie 6y agoI am still amazed every time these Omnibus bills are proposed and passed. It such a blatant sign of corruption and no one seems to give a damn.