4 ms·

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Cong

by csense 14y ago

If I'm ever President, I'll veto any bill that's over two pages without reading it. If we really need to pass a 1000-page law for the good of the country, Congress can send it to me in 500 pieces, which I can veto individually.

saraid216 14y ago
Or you could re-instate the line veto?
Dove 14y ago
That's not practical. Sometimes things need to stick together in a package, and it might be bigger than two pages. As a simple example, if you had a bill that included "Fund this new program" and "Levy this new tax to cover it", those provisions should be passed (or vetoed) together. And the smallest reasonable package might be a lot bigger than that simple example. If you're going to patch something like, for example, the tax code, it could take you well north of a hundred pages to put together a package that coherently accomplishes what you want to. It might not be practical to break it up. There could be many complex clauses that don't accomplish what they're supposed to without the simultaneous enactment of many other complex clauses. I'm not saying I like long and complex bills. I hate them. But recognize that law is like software (in fact, from a certain perspective, law is software). It should be kept as simple as possible, but "as simple as possible" might still be very complex.
protomyth 14y ago
So, no Federal Budget during your administration. While your at it, perhaps you want to look at the actual text density on federal bills.
- csense 14y ago
  Not as a monolithic bill. Modularity and delegation would be better. The main side effect of having Congress micromanaging tens or hundreds of thousands of numbers is that everyone goes for pork. For example, everyone wants military bases in their home state. But with a smaller budget, you might just have a single item for "Military - Domestic Bases - $15 billion" (or whatever the actual number is) and let the military high command decide how many are actually necessary for national defense, where the best locations are, and whether it's better to have a lot of cheap ones everywhere or a few expensive ones in crucial locations. And also, having a 2-year, 4-year or 8-year budget would make a lot of sense too. We can always write another law to repeal it if it's not working (or the next administration/Congress opposes the previous one's decisions), but we'll probably usually let it stand after we pass it. And it reduces waste if agencies know what they're going to get well ahead of time (especially for things like certain kinds of scientific research where you're running long-term experiments).
  - protomyth 14y ago
    "military high command decide" No, that's what we elect congress to deal with. We do not want the "permanent undersecretary" problem showing up in the US like it has in various other governments around the world. Its bad enough much of the regulation we have to deal with was never voted on by congress after seeing what the consequences of their legislation was. That's where the money is in government and what directly affects the voters. Congress cannot pass anything over a two year budget because that would be unconstitutional.

by csense 14y ago

saraid216 14y ago

Or you could re-instate the line veto?

Dove 14y ago

That's not practical. Sometimes things need to stick together in a package, and it might be bigger than two pages. As a simple example, if you had a bill that included "Fund this new program" and "Levy this new tax to cover it", those provisions should be passed (or vetoed) together. And the smallest reasonable package might be a lot bigger than that simple example. If you're going to patch something like, for example, the tax code, it could take you well north of a hundred pages to put together a package that coherently accomplishes what you want to. It might not be practical to break it up. There could be many complex clauses that don't accomplish what they're supposed to without the simultaneous enactment of many other complex clauses. I'm not saying I like long and complex bills. I hate them. But recognize that law is like software (in fact, from a certain perspective, law is software). It should be kept as simple as possible, but "as simple as possible" might still be very complex.

protomyth 14y ago

So, no Federal Budget during your administration. While your at it, perhaps you want to look at the actual text density on federal bills.

csense 14y ago
Not as a monolithic bill. Modularity and delegation would be better. The main side effect of having Congress micromanaging tens or hundreds of thousands of numbers is that everyone goes for pork. For example, everyone wants military bases in their home state. But with a smaller budget, you might just have a single item for "Military - Domestic Bases - $15 billion" (or whatever the actual number is) and let the military high command decide how many are actually necessary for national defense, where the best locations are, and whether it's better to have a lot of cheap ones everywhere or a few expensive ones in crucial locations. And also, having a 2-year, 4-year or 8-year budget would make a lot of sense too. We can always write another law to repeal it if it's not working (or the next administration/Congress opposes the previous one's decisions), but we'll probably usually let it stand after we pass it. And it reduces waste if agencies know what they're going to get well ahead of time (especially for things like certain kinds of scientific research where you're running long-term experiments).
- protomyth 14y ago
  "military high command decide" No, that's what we elect congress to deal with. We do not want the "permanent undersecretary" problem showing up in the US like it has in various other governments around the world. Its bad enough much of the regulation we have to deal with was never voted on by congress after seeing what the consequences of their legislation was. That's where the money is in government and what directly affects the voters. Congress cannot pass anything over a two year budget because that would be unconstitutional.