It's a truly interesting thing to read about from a negotiation perspective, but it must make the process of actually getting things done in politics really hard.
It's a truly interesting thing to read about from a negotiation perspective, but it must make the process of actually getting things done in politics really hard.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnibus_bill
The bills are designed to make the politics easier, at least for the Canadian bills I've read about.
The complexity makes the bills difficult to understand and scrutinize. This makes them nearly impossible to cover in a parliamentary debate and makes it impossible to inform the public about their implications, even in broad strokes. The lack of context makes the interpretation of the ensuing laws more difficult.
At least, that's what I've absorbed from reading up on the issue when it's come up in Canada.
Yes and no. If what you want to get done is sneak something in under the radar, or force the other party to approve one piece of legislation they wouldn't normally approve, in order to pass some other legislation they want more, then it can make it easier to get things done. Unfortunately, those things are often driven by special interests and not what is best for the general population.
The "twist" is that an article there is likely to be formulated (hypothetical) more as something like:
on the third paragraph of article #x of Law #y of dd/mm/yyyy the sentence "the provision in the preceding art.x is intended to be ..." is replaced with the sentence "the provision in the preceding art.x, as modified by the #nth paragraph of Law #w, article #z, of dd/mm/yyyy is due to be ..."
Which makes it totally not understandable until you also have handy Law #y and Law #z and even then, there are probably another two or threee references to other Laws.
I wish it was: this is basically routine in Italy. As an example, last month the government issued a decree, informally referred to as "capienze" (capacities), that regulates the amount of people allowed into cinemas and theatres. Sounds innocuous, right? Unfortunately it also contains an article that significantly reduced the powers of the Garante della Privacy (the italian privacy watchdog).
And this is not limited to the government, the parliament also loves to sneaks unrelated and controverial stuff into ordinary laws. This usually happens early in the summer or late friday evenings, when most MP are absent.
What Francis Fukiyama calls the "vetocracy". The entire stack of US policy work, legislation, lawmaking has many, many veto points. For better or worse.
The functional purpose of the US Senate is to prevent legislation.
"Congress is where good bills go to die." -- legislative aide, personal friend
One consequence is strong tendancy for big bang (punctuated equilibrium) over incrementalism. A recurring scenario is that once a coalition has a veto-proof supermajority, they bum rush as much legislation as possible, before the next mid-term election dissolves the coalition.
That's why progressives and reformers have always advocated for majority rule.
Another consequence of vetocracy is empowering the executive. Explaining why the rise of executive orders.
Alas, many are happy with the status quo, gridlock, dysfunction. My brother, for instance. Who believes that any day spent legislating is a crime against humanity.
What reactionaries like my brother don't grasp is someone will fill the power vacuum, continue to make decisions. Where legislators are impotent, the admins, commissions, lobbyists, executives, judges happily make their own laws and govern without any accountability.
The neoreactionaries (monarchists), like Peter Theil, explicitly prefer the Aristolian philosophy king model. Because people (the polis) are stupid, only natural leaders who are benign dictators would rule, and so forth.
On a side note there is over 2.5 billion allocated to tree equity. No one has figured out what that really means.
So to effect the tree equity program as described, not only would you need to plant a high number of trees in areas that historically did not have them (or could not support them), you have to account for the routine inspection, community outreach programs (“if you see this insect, say something”), infection treatment, and in advanced cases, destruction of infected trees which warrants additional resources for a shade tree commission in these communities where such commission (nor budget) may not have existed.
https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2019/Q3/invasive-pe...
https://extension.psu.edu/spotted-lanternfly
https://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/terrestrial/invertebrate...
I didn't know either, so I googled it. It seems to basically be the idea that the distribution of tree cover in urban areas shouldn't be as correlated with income distribution as it is. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
There's a whole site about it here: https://www.americanforests.org/our-programs/tree-equity/
Tree equality is giving all trees the same sunlight. Tree equity is giving the maples enough sunlight to grow as big as the oaks.
And these days debates just don't happen on bills. Since they have super majority they do whatever they want.
People who cry tears of blood against the govt still don't elect opposition members in Parliament who could stop unfavorable bills and then they cry (sorry fir the reddit-esque sentence) "OmG OpPoSiTion Is UseLesS"
You know copyright, IP rights, and a such is highly related to fishery. Or not?
The US system has the senate, congress, presidency, and a bunch of committees - all of which can impede the others' work, and all of which can be under the control of a different party.
And every person who can block your bill is someone who can extract a concession. You want your bill to pass, and for a mere extra 0.3% pork you'll have my enthusiastic support....
With the result they get thousand-page bills, and a country dotted with more dams and bridges than they can afford to maintain.
As for checks and balances. Typically that refers to the Executive branch (Presidency and agencies), Legislative (House and Senate which have committees), and Judicial.
I’m not sure how this would be any different under a parliamentary system where you still have to work with various groups to form a coalition with enough votes?
This can’t happen in a parliamentary system. There’s only one body, and elections are automatically called if no one can establish a majority coalition. Someone has to have a majority in parliament, and there isn’t any other body to contend with.
Parliamentary systems can almost always conduct business is hyperpolarized conditions; the US system almost never can.
In fact you can actually see that the rate of legislation has been steadily increasing over the years.
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/statistics
I won't make a statement about parliamentary systems, but believe it or not, the US system doesn't grind to a halt when the President's party is not in power, because the President doesn't just magically veto everything like a child might.
Sure, the total amount of legislation in Congress has gone up (since the 80s - the 70s we’re far more prolific), but the bills don’t make it through. Bills that die in committee or get voted down don’t matter.
The president doesn’t need to veto things outright - leaders in Congress get the message and don’t bother passing bills if they can’t get enough support to override the veto.
In which case essentially the only substantial "check" on the prime minister's power is the next election. They don't need to buy the support of anyone from another party - and they can count on the support of their own party.
Of course, UK governments will still spend lots of cash in marginal constituencies in hopes of buying the locals' votes. And there's still corruption, like ministers handing out lucrative PPE contracts to their personal friends; handing out honours in exchange for donations to their party; and retiring to highly paid do-nothing jobs in industries they previously regulated.
That doesn't prevent it from happening all the time, of course. The Conseil Constitutionnel sometimes strikes the "riders" if the law being voted is referred to the Council -- but referral isn't mandatory.
https://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/publications/titre-vi... [in French]
https://www.parliament.uk/site-information/glossary/long-tit...
Not sure if there's a legal system that DOESN'T use nasty euphemisms though...
As a result, it seems like late night sessions are more about show that anything else?