Slashdot Mirror
Senate Approves the ______Act Of____
An anonymous reader writes "Apparently the Senate was in such a rush to get out of town that it forgot to name an 'important' bill that it passed, so the bill goes to the House as The ______Act of____. That's how it appears in the Congressional Record, though the Library of Congress has it listed as The XXXXXXAct ofXXXX. As for what's in the bill, well that appears to be as mysterious as the name. It was officially announced as a bill to tax bonuses to execs who received TARP money. But then someone simply deleted the entire bill and replaced it with text about aviation security. And then it was deleted again, and replaced with something having to do with education. However, because of these constant changes, many of the services that track the bill have the old details listed. On top of that, Nancy Pelosi called the House back for an emergency vote on this unnamed bill, and anyone trying to find out what it's about might be misled into thinking its about aviation security or something entirely unrelated to the actual bill. And people wonder why no one trusts Congress." It appears that the government's new martial law plans are being passed after all.
All bills should be written on a wiki-like system that is publicly viewable, along with all previous versions of the bill and which member of Congress made which changes.
Technoli
When the system for legislation gets so confusing that not even the people passing the bills can keep it straight, I think it shows that there is some fundamental flaw in the system, or it didn't scale well or something.
Do we have to go back to Schoolhouse Rock?
There's an easy fix for this. Make the following change to the Constitution:
Each year, before any new law can be created or any existing law modified, the Speaker of the House must first read aloud every last federal law on the books while all other members of Congress listen. If that takes more than one year (and the federal tax code alone would easily do so) then Congress is allowed only to repeal existing laws the following year. The next year after that, the reading aloud begins again and only if completed within one year can a new law be passed or an old law modified.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Comment removed based on user account deletion
new taxes for foreigners doing business in the US, foreign companies doing business in the US, and US citizens previously entitled to tax credits from living abroad, and well over $1 trillion worth of rescinded spending (presumably to get money to give to the State governments). There are other details, obviously.
And you should be thrilled about this. The House is now operating under PAYGO rules, which means that any new spending has to be offset by budget cuts or tax increases elsewhere.
According to the CBO, if we manage to stick with PAYGO discipline, our debt will stabilize (i.e., the country will not fucking die). During the 2001-2008 we did not have PAYGO in force. As a result, we did horrendous, possibly permanent damage to the nation's finances.
Let's pray that we don't go back to those days.
Congress cannot constrain its own future actions (at least, not without a constitutional amendment). That's a general principle of all legislative bodies. Otherwise Republicans would pass laws making universal health care illegal, and Democrats would pass laws making unions untouchable.
So no, strictly speaking congress doesn't have to read their own laws. They can pass as many conflicting laws as they want. It's the executive and judicial branches that are responsible for reading and interpreting.
"The idea that Clinton somehow brought on the mortgage crisis by forcing banks to lend to poor people is simply ludicrous."
You are correct, strictly speaking. However, it was done with the blessing of top leaders of the Democratic party. Here is a transcript of Barney Frank's speech before an assembly to amend the regulation of the Fannie and Freddie funds, this measure was rammed through Congress with the objections of the Bush Administration The measure went through the Democratically-controlled house regardless: Frank Speech.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
I can't speak for the original poster. But I disagree with pretty much everything you said so strongly that I couldn't resist putting in my $0.02.
If you accept that the massive influx of government spending is the proper response to a dead economy (I do),
I don't. Massive government spending turned a minor little recession into the Great Depression. It's never helped, and it never will. Central planning the Keynesians love so much has failed time and again.
If something doesn't work, the answer is not to do more of the same thing. Get the government out of the way and let the free market work. (And, no, we have not had anything vaguely resembling a free market since the Depression).
Nothing except a free market economy will ever be able to cope with black swans.
and that it is temporary (god I hope so),
Social Security was a "temporary emergency measure." And it will end, when the Ponzi scheme (which it is) collapses under its own weight. Government never voluntarily gives up any of its power. But go on hoping for change you can believe in.
what specifically are you referring to? The healthcare bill got watered down to the point where all it did was set up a competitive price exchange for healthcare... sort of the Amazon.com of getting sick.
Actually, it got turned into a giant gimme to the insurance companies (who are crying all the way to the bank) and yet another giant bureaucracy that will destroy the quality of health care in this country. Along with tons of extra police-state tidbits like extra taxes on gold.
They passed a toothless wall-street reform act.
That's kind of the point. The people were screaming against the bailouts. The more we learned, the louder we screamed. So they passed this to placate us and promise "This will keep it from ever happening again." And people fell for it. Most Americans are still so brainwashed that they actually trust the "government" to protect them from the "evil corporations."
Regulations like that are just a security blanket. For all intents and purposes, those "evil corporations" have become "the government."
And saying this is as bad as Bush II is going too far. We're not stuck in any new intractable wars,
He's following Bush II's policies pretty much point for point. Along with his handling of accused "enemy combatants"...at least Bush II never sentenced an American citizen to death without any sort of trial. And the war machine's trying really hard to find an excuse to open up another front in Iran. Give it time.
we haven't lost all of our allies,
I suspect that's mainly because they're still buying into the belief that "absolutely anyone would have to be better than Bush" (which I thought, too, until I started to actually listen to what he was--and wasn't--actually saying.
He has managed to insult most of our allies and kiss most of our enemy's asses. Not quite as bad as Bush II, but I think he more than makes up for it elsewhere.
and we haven't had any new worldwide economic collapses.
Not really fair to blame that one totally on Bush (though he definitely deserves a share of the blame). The roots for this one go back to at least Carter's days. And we're pretty much still in the middle of it. (Throwing money at it makes it look like things are improving, but you have to fix the actual problems before you can expect them to go away).
Much as I despise Bush, this collapse is more the fault of the boom-bust cycle that's guaranteed by the Federal Reserve and government interference in the market (in this case, encouraging, and sometimes requiring, banks to take extra risks while promising to protect them when the risks backfire).
Mainstream economists are starting to admit that we're still in serious trouble, and won't be in the clear for a long time. I almost suspect they're finally coming around to the idea that the double-dip the Austrians are predicting just might be possible after all.