> See Downsize DC's One Subject at a Time Act (OSTA) which does almost exactly what you ask[0] in addition to eliminating riders. I have heard that what the bill wants to accomplish would require a constitutional amendment due to legislative entrenchment (the current congress cannot bind a future congress) but I do not know what the truth of the situation is.
This is pretty universally accepted as true among everyone I've heard discuss this kind of issue, including (especially) legal and constitutional scholars. Anything Congress can put it a law purporting to constrain what laws it can pass, it can undo with any new law, simply by passing a law that conflicts with it.
> * Read The Bills Act: 'Yea' votes require that the congressperson has read/heard the bill (no more "I didn't know that was in there!"), mandatory 7-day public review period of final bill text. I think that the additional requirement of a mandatory reading of a bill's text before a quorum will keep this one from being considered though.
Like OSTA, this is an attempt to legislate a fixed element of the rules of the houses of Congress, and would therefore seem to require a Constitutional amendment, for the same reason.
> Enumerated Powers Act: Congress must cite the constitutional authority on which any proposed bill rests. The full text of OSTA[3] includes this citation.
If framed properly (as a dictate to the judiciary on how they are to apply federal law, and particularly that they are to consider only the cited powers when deciding on the Constitutionality of a challenged federal law), this is perhaps one that can be done without a Constitutional Amendment. (OTOH, what will quickly happen if it is passed is that every provision of the Constitution for which there is a colorable claim that it grants any authority to Congress will be cited in every piece of legislation as a source of authority.)