Can Congress pass a law outlawing giving bills cute names that are completely irrelevant to the intent of the law? Once they get that accomplished they can work on something else
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
For instance, if the law was "No driving over 70mph on I-75", shortening the law to "No driving" isn't an improvement. And even if we maintain the detail and shorten to "No 70+mph driving @ I-75" it doesn't improve things.
Concise is good. shortness for shortness sake is not. We don't need to be playing code golf with laws.
Budget bills in particular can get really tedious. And any bill that, say, strikes or adds a word to already extant law, would require reading the entirety of the law so changed.
Forcing them the discomfort of having to read it out loud all by themselves should help greatly with that.
I’m looking at you former speaker of the house that said we have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.
Same with voter ID. It’s touted as “racist” although other poorer countries easily handle the issue of voter ID.
It’s almost as if one political party amasses power by continually brow beating their constituents into a victim mentality.
It's sometimes helpful to look at the name of the bill & assume that the bill will achieve the exact opposite.
> Can we make congressmen actually read the bills they vote on?
Most Congress members vote based on spheres of influence, not spheres of interest. The lobbyists that fund the politician's campaign tells the politician how to vote & the consequences of voting against the lobbyist's wishes.
Cattle, not pets.