We can make Congress read the bills they pass

The people's power is real only if politicians are accountable

Nearly four thousand years ago, Hammurabi of Babylonia produced an innovation for civilized life: He had the laws of the land written down, so people could read them.

Today, we have a rare opportunity to take the next logical step. Congress, notorious for not reading the bills they vote on, can actually be forced to… you know… read them.

Refreshingly, this is not a partisan issue. It is yet another example of the invisible battle-lines between patricians and the plebians. With the power of the Republic resting with the people, our politicians work for us. We pay their salaries while they sit in their Olympus-like halls. It isn’t unreasonable that we ask them to read the bills they are voting on.

“Oh, but some of these laws are thousands of pages long!”

Too bad. The last Harry Potter book is fairly wordy, and there are eight-year-olds who’ve finished it.

The PATRIOT ACT gets all the attention in this regard, infamously shuttled into our lives by inexcusable political cowardice (with only one exception.) Yet vast bulks of other legislation pass through Congressional hands without being read. Some of these bills are titanic tomes, so convoluted and stuffed with pork that they rival the weighty stone tablets of our ancient Babylonian lawgiver.

The non-partisan political action group DownsizeDC.org, fierce advocates for small government and government accountability, have been making headway in addressing this travesty.

“No LEGISLATION without representation,” they state on their campaign website. “We hold this truth to be self-evident, that those in Congress who vote on legislation they have not read, have not represented their constituents. They have misrepresented them.”

The campaign’s proposition is the “Read the Bills Act (RTBA),” which requires some pretty astonishingly common sense items from our political elite:

 

• Each bill, and every amendment, must be read in its entirety before a quorum in both the House and Senate.

• Every member of the House and Senate must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has attentively either personally read, or heard read, the complete bill to be voted on.

• Every old law coming up for renewal under the sunset provisions must also be read according to the same rules that apply to new bills.

• Every bill to be voted on must be published on the Internet at least 7 days before a vote, and Congress must give public notice of the date when a vote will be held on that bill.

• Passage of a bill that does not abide by these provisions will render the measure null and void, and establish grounds for the law to be challenged in court.

• Congress cannot waive these requirements.

There is a fully-intended consequence of this legislation that transcends the simple wisdom of reading what you are casting votes on. It cuts down the pork. It trims laws so they can be read and understood by all.

Hammurabi's law may have been point-blank brutal, but there was no room to mistake their meaning. Our laws should be easily comprehensible; when no one has to read them, there's no pressure in keeping them concise. American laws shouldn’t require a team of lawyers, philosophers, and oracle-bone readers to interpret legislation that will affect our lives and country.

From the DownsizeDC.org website, the perks of this law will be:

 

• Bills will shrink, be less complicated, and contain fewer subjects, so that Congress will be able to endure hearing them read.

• Fewer bad proposals will be passed due to “log-rolling.”

• No more secret clauses will be inserted into bills at the last moment.

• Government should shrink as old laws reach their sunset date, and have to be read for the first time before they can be renewed.

Isn’t it surprising that this is even an issue? Now let’s do something about it!