Read the laws
Posted by Joshua Claybourn on 11 March 2005 | 5 responses
Matt Yglesias offers a depressing chart on recent pieces of legislation and the amount of time legislators were given to read them. On average legislators are given one hour to read every 89.61 pages of law. That includes time to research, discuss, consult, reread, etc. In other words, it ain’t happening. Radley Balko penned a Fox News column on this before. As he wrote in his post pointing to Yglesias’ chart, “It’s also how pork projects, nasty little provisions like the RAVE Act that couldn’t get passed on their own, and naming the U.S. Embassy in Rome after Mel Sembler get snuck into the U.S. Code.”
5 Responses to “Read the laws”
Legislators do have staff to help them sort through this sort of stuff, but I agree with your general sentiment.
Actually, the stuff in the report Yglesias is citing is even more interesting than just this one procedural note. You note how the U.S. is spending time naming the Vatican embassy after people, would you be interested in why? David Dreir’s rules committee changed the formatting of days for debate. It used to be that Monday and Tuesday were days in Congress reserved for legislation like that; naming random buildings after people and the like, while Wednesday and Thursday were reserved for substantive debate on actual legislation with a point; things like the Bills Yglesias is noting.
So, guess what Mr. Drier did? His rules committee decided that Congress clearly wasn’t spending enough effort naming buildings after people, so he expanded the time available for debating those sorts of bills by giving Wednesday over to that sort. Now, the problem with this is; there is only 1 day each week now available for any real substantive debate: Thursday. This dramatically reduces the time available for negotiating, deal making, discussion, etc, and makes it a lot easier for the Republicans to ram bills through the House, since if a bill does not pass on 1 Thursday, it has to wait a full week’s cycle before its even really discussed again.
There’s also a very cute part of the report where they take David Drier’s words from 1993 and show that he’s doing exactly the same things today in the Rules committee.
I’d like to see the congressional rules changed to require that each governmental agency have an appropriation package that is voted on individually once a year, and a rule that says that no amendments may be offered to a bill that is not directly germane to the bill itself. That would limit the types of backpage provisions that pass things that would not and could not get passed if there was an up or down vote on that specific provision.
Of course, that rule change would have to be passed by the same people who benefit from it being the way it is currently. The Senate and House doesn’t want that kind of accountability because it robs them of excuses and the ability to sneak in amendments that benefit their district or whoever paid for their election.
David Dreir’s rules committee changed the formatting of days for debate.
Just out of curiosity, does this rule mean that only non-substantive issues can be debated Monday through Wednesday? It seems incredible to me that Congress would have devoted even half their time, before the rules change, to such issues.
Eric, if I’m reading the report correctly, you are absolutely correct that assuming they followed the rules, the only time formerly allowed for debate was W & R, and now it’s just R.