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Comment by gwright | Hacker News Reader

Why are there so many people here surprised that executive departments participate in proposing legislation?

It seems like completely normal activity to me.

It’s not normal to write draft legislation. It is normal to have a legislative affairs office that works with Congress on all sorts of things but to propose draft legislation is weird. Agencies typically try to avoid doing this as it could adversely impact their funding moving forward. Why fund an agency that already has enough money to fund a lobbying arm? It’s a norm more than a rule but it’s a thing in my experience.

This report suggests that this sort of thing is not uncommon but that it rarely takes the form of a complete bill, which is closer to your term "draft legislation".

Redlining an existing statute with changes is what the DOJ published and is closer to what I was getting at when I said "participate in proposing legislation".

https://www.acus.gov/sites/default/files/documents/technical...

Thanks that’s a great paper. Much obliged.

I guess that depends - is it a frequent occurrence, historically?

It happens all the time. It is a completely mundane part of the daily functioning of government.

In my experience this is not at all normal. Any more examples off-hand if agencies writing draft legislation? Not talking rulemaking, talking actual law. Would happily be proven wrong here but it’s something I have actively seen agencies avoid in the past, so I’m curious where you’ve seen this kind of overt draft legislation written.

See my response to your other comment above.

Thanks. Seems like I’m mistaken about this or my experience is not as common. Appreciate the links.

I’d be interested if they always came with a press release and public quotes / pressure - but maybe that’s in the ACU report. Haven’t gotten all the way through it yet.

That does seem a bit unusual but then again the amount of attention that social media (and media in general) is getting lately is basically off the charts.

Further there are often laws that basically state "here's some general guide, executive agency X will figure out the specifics and publish that in the Fed Register as regulations."

The law instructs them to write the rules / guidance.It’s their responsibility to then do that and we fund them to do that.

Agencies don’t get funded to write the law that gives them the mandate to write the regulation. That’s a classic bureaucratic self-licking ice cream cone.

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