3 ms·

Well I would start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule From there (since I am in the US)

Well I would start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-subject_rule From there (since I am in the US) I would look at the decades of jurisprudence at the state level where most states have already adopted a Single Subject rule for their legislature's and have not seemed to gotten bogged down by it. it is not a new concept. here is a pretty good overview from the MN legislature: https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/pubs/ss/sssubtitle.pdf https://www.house.mn.gov/hrd/pubs/ss/sssubtitle.pdf Then I could look to the Proposed law in Congress (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/872/text?r=7&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/872/...) which addresses your budget concern by adding "An appropriations bill shall not contain any general legislation or change of existing law provision, " meaning a budget is about a budget not about passing new laws or changing laws / regulations. That is just a start of where one could go for this topic

chongli 3y ago
How does this deal with issues where a particular regulation needs funding to have any force (such as funding a regulatory agency to enforce the regulation) and opponents of the regulation might choose to defund the agency (by removing its funding in the budget) to prevent enforcement?
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  Do you have any experience with the legislative process at all? Because that is pretty common tool (defunding a program or agency) used today and has no relevance to the single subject rule
  - chongli 3y ago
    "An appropriations bill shall not contain any general legislation or change of existing law provision” If you can defund an agency to prevent the enforcement of a law, you can effectively use a budget bill to change an existing law provision, even without changing the law itself. This defeats the spirit of that statement above.
    - phpisthebest 3y ago
      I think you are stretching now, further nothing is ever perfect, the question is would Single Subject bills be better or worse then the current system By all objective measure they would be better for public policy
mst 3y ago
I've seen enough examples go past to think that single subject rules tend to be honoured in the letter but not the spirit, but equally if a frankenbill can pass without a single legislator invoking that rule, then it's entirely possible its components were all sufficiently popular the outcome was fine. So I think it's entirely possible that you could come up with a single subject rule that was enough of a net win I'd be in favour, but I suspect you'd want to look at how the existing ones have been gamed and work out which those cases want to have an official way to do them and which you want to reword things to make harder.

chongli 3y ago

How does this deal with issues where a particular regulation needs funding to have any force (such as funding a regulatory agency to enforce the regulation) and opponents of the regulation might choose to defund the agency (by removing its funding in the budget) to prevent enforcement?

phpisthebest 3y ago
Do you have any experience with the legislative process at all? Because that is pretty common tool (defunding a program or agency) used today and has no relevance to the single subject rule
- chongli 3y ago
  "An appropriations bill shall not contain any general legislation or change of existing law provision” If you can defund an agency to prevent the enforcement of a law, you can effectively use a budget bill to change an existing law provision, even without changing the law itself. This defeats the spirit of that statement above.
  - phpisthebest 3y ago
    I think you are stretching now, further nothing is ever perfect, the question is would Single Subject bills be better or worse then the current system By all objective measure they would be better for public policy

mst 3y ago

I've seen enough examples go past to think that single subject rules tend to be honoured in the letter but not the spirit, but equally if a frankenbill can pass without a single legislator invoking that rule, then it's entirely possible its components were all sufficiently popular the outcome was fine. So I think it's entirely possible that you could come up with a single subject rule that was enough of a net win I'd be in favour, but I suspect you'd want to look at how the existing ones have been gamed and work out which those cases want to have an official way to do them and which you want to reword things to make harder.