Most of the news lately is filled with talk on massive government changes to banking, healthcare, etc.. While I do agree that things need to be changed in these areas, I think one major thing has to happen first before any of it will be done right - cut off the money...
I think we can all agree that there is no way washington will ever get things done the right way if lobbying and corporate money keeps swaying votes in their favor all the time. This goes for both Dems and Repubs - both sides are continuously swayed by outside sources that are not their constituents - and that makes me very angry at times... I know it cannot be an easy task to completely rid the government of these things, but I think we have reached a point that we must try - only problem is how? With everyone being so money-hungry in this country, i dont see how you would be able to convince the house and senate to enact such a massive change. Do you? Again, it just has to be done at some point - at least in my goofy right-winged brain i think it does.
And an additional thing i keep pondering (kinda fits with this same topic) - can we make a massive change to the way bills are written? Here is my idea - make it mandatory that each bill that is put before the house or senate can only contain one item.
What i mean is this: if the bill is about building a bridge across a river, thats the only thing that can be in that bill - no earmarks, no pork, nothing else. Just that one item alone. This is another thing that really has to get changed at some point for our government to work better - and of course its another thing that I have to ask- how?
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[Dibs on first comment! Welcome to the show, Michael!]
ReplyDeleteOne item per bill -- an interesting suggestion, one that gets me thinking about the sprawling mess that government can be. But consider: a glance at one spreadsheet version of the federal budget reveals a couple thousand line items... and even those items are pretty general ("military construction"... "general science and basic research"... "agricultural research and statistical analysis"), containing numerous programs and subprograms themselves. Imagine if we were to conduct roll-call votes on each of those budget lines. 15 minutes each, times 2000... that's 12.5 full work weeks, just to conduct final votes. That doesn't count committee time, debate, amendments, etc.
Earmarks and riders and omnibus bills are open to abuse, but could we practically govern one item at a time?
you have a very good point there - that would be a major hangup on doing the budget in any sort of a timely fashion. I do think it would be fantastic to make them go through the budget in that kind of detail, but maybe the budget would be the one thing to be exempt from the one-item idea... either way, it is an interesting idea to ponder. :)
ReplyDeleteI keep running into the wall between ideology and pragmatism. Increasingly, I'm choosing pragmatism. :-)
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