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Comment by slg | Hacker News Reader

>The "Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act" was approved as part of a larger appropriations bill that provides aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan.

Regardless of your opinions on TikTok, this type of thing is incredibly frustrating and routine practice in American politics. Can't actually get support for the legislation you want? Just add it on to some other completely unrelated piece of legislation that is more popular.

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Historically this is just how it works. You want law x passed and I'm ambivalent about it, I want law y passed and you're ambivalent about it. We both need each other to pass either of them, so we agree to pass both as part of a larger law. This isn't a new thing and has been happening since the 1800s. As early as the decision to make DC the capital we've traded goals through compromise.

The process does get abused and I get frustration over those instance. For this one in particular, there are thematic similarities that can reasonably fall under "national security concerns".

“it’s ok because it has always been like this” is both a fallacy and a really bad argument.

It's not a fallacy if one of the complaints is "routine practice in American politics." It's directly pointing out that it isn't routine by accident, it's routine by design from the beginning.

>It's directly pointing out that it isn't routine by accident, it's routine by design from the beginning.

That isn't a defense of the quality of the practice. Something can have a bad "design from the beginning".

There is no reason a compromise needs to be formalized into a singular piece of legislation. Doing it this way helps politicians avoid accountability because it gives them plausible deniability to say they didn't support specific provisions of the overall bill. I think that is ultimately worse for our political system than making passing legislation more difficult.

> Doing it this way helps politicians avoid accountability because it gives them plausible deniability to say they didn't support specific provisions of the overall bill

Whose position on this bill, in the House or Senate, do you think is unclear?

People's positions on the bill are the one thing that is known. The problem is that it allows politicians to avoid accountability on the individual issues within that bill. A vote on this doesn't tell you directly whether a politician supports banning TikTok. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Ukraine. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Israel. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Taiwan. It just tells you whether they support this specific bill.

> A vote on this doesn't tell you directly whether a politician supports banning TikTok. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Ukraine. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Israel. It doesn't tell you whether they support aid to Taiwan.

In the House, these bills were individually voted on. (In TikTok's case, twice.) In the Senate, pretty much everyone has made their views known on at least Ukraine, Israel and TikTok. (Taiwan hasn't been particularly contentious.)

>In the Senate, pretty much everyone has made their views known on at least Ukraine, Israel and TikTok.

There is a reason I used the word "accountability". There is difference between talk and action and accountability is about making sure the two align. "Made their views known" by itself is just talk that can easily be obfuscated. A voting record is an action and we shouldn't allow politicians to distance themselves from that action with a simple "it was part of a larger bill".

> we shouldn't allow politicians to distance themselves from that action

Again, we have an actual case on hand. Who is distancing themselves from anything? Whose position—in talk and votes—on each of these issues isn’t abundantly clear?

>Again, we have an actual case on hand.

Which is the disconnect here. I criticized a general practice of which this is an example while you are focusing exclusively on that one example.

> I criticized a general practice of which this is an example

But it’s an example that clearly disproves the point. The accountability you describe is a communication, not vote structuring, problem.

Politicians lie which is why communication alone can’t be trusted the way actions like voting can.

No, in the house they voted on this bill by itself and it passed overwhelmingly - 360 to 58

And that wasn't expected to happen in the Senate. Also that is the vote total for this bill, not the previous one that passed the House last month.

getting a clean up/down vote on a bill is pretty rare (as you said yourself) so it’s strange to critique this bill when it actually had one.

The previous House vote was 352-65, so not much different.

> Can't actually get support for the legislation you want? Just add it on to some other completely unrelated piece of legislation that is more popular

This bill was individually voted on by the House and sent to the Senate in March [1]. There it was deliberated in committee and re-drafted [2]. The House, on Saturday, passed it separately from the Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan votes [3] (alongside Russian asset forfeiture and restrictions on Chinese financial institutions that do business with Iran). It was then bundled in the Senate for an up-and-down vote.

This was absoloutely not an omnibus slip-in.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/technology/us-house-vote-force-byted...

[2] https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2024/03/14/congress/ca...

[3] https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/8038...

Regardless of what side you are on about this, it will be used to chip away at the liberties of American citizens. Look at the Patriot Act or the FISA wiretap laws. They told everyone it was only for foreigners, but it is impacting Americans.

This was an amendment that was individually voted on

Well, they're not completely unrelated. The TikTok issue and the defense spending issue are both framed as national security concerns.

But secondly, I don't actually mind this aspect of the US political process. It's part of compromise and negotiations which are indispensable in an environment where not everyone is on the same page about what's important.

Tell that to China, it's worst over there, no reason given just a great firewall ban shows up for your app/service. They have banned so many popular services there for decades, it's time for other countries to do tit for tat.

I'm more interested in maintaining my own freedom & not further hindering freedom of the Web than spiting the Chinese government. I understand passions may be high when it comes to China, but do please consider these tradeoffs, because I'm not sure what this does to Chinese government in the grand scheme of things, but now the US government has a framework and precedent to stop me from using apps.

It's either this way or pass nothing ever. Unless the country tilts away from basically 50/50 with two parties that constantly try to undo the other there are few options to get anything through congress.

I think I'd take pass nothing ever...

That's a reasonable take but I think practically things need to get done for government to function.

It was a series of bills

Besides the "unrelated legislation" thing, this is just such blatant corporate welfare for the American BigCo's that will buy Tiktok. Microsoft and Google are absolutely salivating at the thought of buying their way into a major social network in 2024, and not only will the Feds not go after them for antitrust, they'll actually greenlight it in advance and mandate the sale. Big tech lobbying money well spent!

The legislation doesn't require American ownership.

And the media will provide cover by calling it the tiktok bill to distract the people from the $60 billion given to ukraine and $26 billion given to israel. Wonderful isn't it?

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