We should also stop calling these bills like "the patriot act", "USA freedom act" and replace the names with something like a unique identifier. That would remove some of the support from bills like the patriot act.
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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.
Downsize DC's Agenda page has a list of all of their bills[1]. OSTA is the one I think has the best chance of being implemented. Some others with good ideas include:
* 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.
* Enumerated Powers Act: Congress must cite the constitutional authority on which any proposed bill rests. The full text of OSTA[3] includes this citation.
I don't view Downsize DC as a very effective organization (don't sign up for their newsletter unless you like poorly-formatted rants), so I would love to see other orgs throw their weight behind OSTA and RTBA. It seems to me that it's something EFF or ACLU could support, for example, because so many of the things they fight against were enacted using sneaky riders.
[0]https://downsizedc.org/etp/one-subject [1]https://downsizedc.org/agenda
[3]https://downsizedc.org/blog-content/the-one-subject-at-a-tim...
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.)
Huh, I just went to Wikipedia to read up on that and discovered that in 2013, a super PAC was registered to push for "an Article V Convention for the limited purpose of proposing an amendment to provide every law enacted by Congress shall embrace only one subject which shall be clearly expressed in the bill's title"[0]. I also did not know that 41 states already have single subject provisions in their constitutions.
So, GP, scratch all that Downsize DC stuff and instead get the word out about the Single Subject Amendment PAC[1]! With a majority of states already using them for state law it seems like we ought to be able to convince people that it's a good idea to subject Congress to the same rule.
Out of curiosity, did anyone here already know about this PAC? I've been making noises about DownsizeDC's proposals since 2013 and this never hit my radar until now. I'm switching tactics to drum up support for this immediately; I only wish I'd known sooner.
[0]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_to_propose_amendment...
All bills have a unique identifier (a bill number combined with the Congress in which it is introduced.)
However, its very common for them to have, as part of the content of the bill, language providing a title, which -- especially with controversial bills -- is often, for bills with controversial subject matter, itself a brand name designed to make the bill sound warm and fluffy.
The Unique IDs are hardly memorable and hard to keep straight which applies to which substance, so the titles are convenient and useful in most cases (and the convenience encourages the use, which is then exploited in the controversial cases.)