Our last article talked about term limits, which mostly (if not entirely) focuses on limiting the power of the United States Federal Congress. Following the same trial of resentment, we can dive further into how our Congress actually operates. Starting with the constitution (which is where all American political discussions should start) the first words of Article 1 says:

“All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States”

When reading older text like this one, the first thing I (personally) like to do is substitute antiquated words with more modern language just so I can hope to grasp not just the message but maybe even the tone at the time.

“All lawmaking management contained, allowed, or assumed shall be absolute in a Congress of the United States”

i find it is often times easy to read older text, like the Constitution, and easily get confused or lost just because of the dialect of the time. With this phrase, the document is setting the tone for what is to come. And this one line is fairly absolute in that all authority with creating, and I would include upkeep/maintenance (although that seems to be forgotten based on the text alone), of all laws. This would mean laws both directed towards citizens and all branches of government.

But, Congress also doesn’t have unlimited power as the constitution immediately proceeds to limit this power as well as provide a foundation and path for this power to work. One example of the limits to this power is in the second sentence when it says House Representatives must be chosen every second year by “the people” of the States. In section 3 it does the same for the Senate. Even though this might seem common sense today, at this point in history lifetime appointments were far more common. This is your first set of limitations on this power. Some guidance that is given would be where it states all bills for raising Revenue start in the House of Representatives. Which doesn’t include the types of laws (see all of section 8) that they’re able to push, which is a MAJOR limitation on power and a clear pathway for the Congress to work. This all put together is the road map we currently use, with a few modern perversions.

And while the Constitution is, for it’s time, very well thought out and for a “version two” product fairly complete - but it is showing it’s age and we really need to start looking at what has cultivated out of the past 250+ years. I’m not someone who believes the constitution is sacred ground which can never be touched. As a matter of fact, I have a firm belief that not constantly tweaking it to make it better is a disservice to the document and its ideas as well as dishonor to our forefathers. This is why I will now suggest our next amendment to the constitution:

All Bills presented to any Chamber of Congress to be discussed, read, voted upon, and sent to the another Chamber or the President can only consist of a single issue, which must include the following elements:

• A title consisting of only the date and/or order presented to the chamber

• A constraint, benefit, or directive specifically at one of the following: The People, The States, or the United States Government

• A Implementation or Administration method for the constraint, benefit, or directive

• A sanction process used when prosecution of the constraint, abuse of the benefit, or failure of the directive

• A objective to detail both the success and failure of the constraint, benefit, or directive

• A projected cost which must be audited by the Treasury, where the cost is not allowed to exceed the said amount and must be substantiated by supporting data

• A tax increase or decrease which must fully account for the cost of the bill as well as a minimum and maximum threshold used to force a immediate return date back to congress

• A review date where the bill is to return back to the original chamber of congress for a public review and audit, where at this time the bill can be invalidated due to not meeting its original goals

• A invalidate date where the bill is no longer valid, that can be no more than 100 years in the future

• Any supporting data can be added as supplementary document to be tagged and collected before sending the bill to the next chamber or the President

From the time this amendment is passed, all existing legislation not ratified in the Constitution of the United States of America will have 20 years to conform to this standard, or they will be fully eliminated.

This is something that has been seriously discussed at least for the majority of my adult lifetime in some capacity. George W. Bush mentioned this in 1992 when he suggested a “Line Item Veto” amendment, which would give the President the authority to strike single line items from the yearly budget or any massive spending bills. While I’m sure it has been mentioned many times before that, the point to be illustrated here is this isn’t as radical of a idea as it might seem at first glance. Popular support for ideas like this have been fairly high. 44 states have line item veto’s already on the book. This would be a slight expansion of that where it doesn’t require anyone to veto anything, it requires the work to be done upfront so public time isn’t wasted discussing something that doesn’t actually get past the final hurdle of the President. But there are other benefits of this particular amendment as it is written.

A Check on Congresses Power to Write a Seemingly Infinite Number of Bills

The first, and possibly most important benefit, is a check on Congresses power to write a seemingly infinite number of bills. There is only so much time in a day, and there is even less time that elected officials are willing to work. As I have mentioned in past articles if every member of the House of Representatives was to get up and speak to the rest of the house - without any individual discussions, voting, campaigning, or other activities each person would get less than 6 hours in the whole year to be heard. That is about 30 minutes per month, less than 10 minutes per week. This assumes that they don’t spend time writing bills, or meeting with voters, or even vacation time. Yet, in the 116th Congress, which spanned 2 years from January 3 2019 to January 3 2021, the US House passed nearly 12,000 bills. That is 500 bills per month. And according to Slate: “The average statute passed by the 109th Congress—the latest session for which figures are available—clocked in at around 15 pages…” So if you do the basic math 500 bills per month times 15 pages, is nearly 7,500 pages per month. Govtrack is a great place to visit to do your own research. Even if we are extremely generous, each page should include about 200-300 words. For the sake of math we’ll choose 200. That means that nearly 1,500,000 million words are voted YES each month. This doesn’t include bills that are discussed and maybe don’t pass or aren’t voted on.

A exceptional reader that isn’t speaking but only reading, can read about 250 words per minute. If you break that down it would be about 100 hours of reading material. Or that is if you read all 7 of the Harry Potter Series of books, to yourself only, about twice (a average reader should be able to read the whole series in about 60 hours). And this is voted on EVERY month of the year.

Implementing a check like this would require all bills to be a single issue, making them much smaller, physically limiting the time the two chambers can spend making and voting on these bills, and HOPEFULLY sparking a huge interest from voters to actually read what your congress is voting on as each item will be more digestible. After a while though, this will start to physically limit them on what they can vote on. At first it will be “business as usual” as they’ll just pass 120,000 bills instead of 12,000, but these new bills will include a end date to the bill which requires that if they want to expand their powers they will eventually have to give something else up. It (in a indirect way) prevents packing of bills from SuperPac’s and heavy donors. But instead if they want to provide a bill it will be much easier to read and much easier for congress members to clearly see and not want their name associated with putting a bad idea out there, instead of just packing it in the back of a tedious budget bill.

Draw Clear Lines On Where Congress Members Fall With Certain Issues

One of the best disinfectants is good ol’fashion sunlight. And, this is no less true than the infection of corruption in Washington D.C. While this amendment doesn’t prevent Congress members from bringing bad ideas to the floor, it will draw clear lines on where Congress members fall with certain issues. Imagine a if your Senator brought to the floor a bill that just said something like “Give $787,400,000 of U.S. Tax Dollars this year to Afghanistan to support “Gender Studies”, this will cost each U.S. Tax payer a additional $5 per year in taxes.”

This might seem awfully specific, but it is exactly what a bill under this amendment would look like, and was included in a bill in 2002 which has basically cost US Tax Payers this burden each year since. A individual would be ashamed to bring this bill to the floor by itself. Even if you do support gender studies, you would also have to determine if you are going to pay for it as well.

So let’s expand this to some more nefarious bills, like “lifting trade restrictions on a “random country”.” It would clearly draw the line where it would raise people’s eye brows if this “random” country was let’s say stealing a unusual amount of technology causing a major gap in American wealth. This would be something that is clearly against American interest. Also, maybe we can stop seeing that yearly bill that stuffs a 1% pay raise for soldiers in it just so it passes. I think we can all agree, just vote on the 1% pay raise for soldiers by itself and see if it passes, we’d all like to know who voted for AND against that! This will really bring sunlight (the best disinfectant) to the infection in Washington D.C.

More Common Sense Bills Should Be Introduced, More Quickly

Everything being out in the open is a good result, but more importantly it requires bad ideas to be out in the open. Which has a direct result, in those bad idea’s not being introduced to begin with - or at very least they’re dismissed more easily. What would a politician do if they brought forth a bill to eliminate all subsidies to farmers who are producing food for American consumption, just to save about $25 a year in taxes, yet it would project that food wouldn’t be available in grocery stores in large portions of the country? This politician would probably be hunted down by hungry parents and tortured.

This turns into one quick positive, less bad ideas and more common sense ideas are brought to the floor - and they can be processed more quickly because they’re single issues and no one has to weight the “good and the bad” in a bill! In the 1990’s movie Dave, a bill is passed that cut funding to a kid’s homeless shelter. Who in their right mind, even if they were markedly evil would dare go on public record supporting or even debating that idea. If someone brought it forward, and was able to push it to a vote, the vote would happen and it would fail. No one needs to discuss it. This means that things move faster, because there is less debate when the longest bill is only a few sentences long.

Makes Navigating the Swamp of Bills (or Laws) Much Easier

Expanding onto bills being processed more quickly by the legislature, another benefit is when having to sift through them to utilize or defend yourself from them - it would have to be MUCH easier to do. There would be more laws to go through (yes, that is true), but them being single issues where you could clearly read it and clearly determine if it matters for your situation would be infinatly better than reading a 200 page bill where you don’t know if page 5 applies to you since your situation is on page 193. This would allow a lot more people to represent themselves and it would give people more confidence that they wouldn’t have “the book” thrown at them as a lot of bills just straight wouldn’t apply any more.

Not only that, I think (and this has no real input or previous experiences to back it up) media and politicians wouldn’t be able to lie about the bills anymore. It is one of the biggest issues with modern media and politics. And I don’t think that this will prevent them from doing it - what it will do however is allow people to research it themselves, understand the bill, and then make a decision on their own about where the truth lands. And after some time of this being the status quo, politicians and activist will learn that lying doesn’t help you get re-elected it just earns you distrust.

Clearly tells Congress and The People the cost of the bill.

This makes some bold assertions. First, that the Government would do something cheaper (never-mind better) than a private business would. Second, that only half of the kids would need this service. Third, that they wouldn’t need it every day. Fourth, that people wouldn’t abuse this system of “welfare” just so they could dump their kids for a few extra hours each day. So this idea that each person would pay nearly $280 a year, is the absolute most generous idea I could possibly give. And that $280 number assumes that every man, woman, and child (including the ones being cared fir) are paying taxes. A more accurate number would be the 144 million that filed taxes in 2018 of which only about 55% of tax payers paid more than what they received back, which brings the number up to about $980 a year per person - for this half time daycare.

This really helps frame the conversation. Because a lot of people would love free child care, but how many people are willing to outright pay a extra $1000 a year at minimum when they either a) don’t have kids, b) already had kids and have put them through it all themselves, c) already have kids and have them in specific private programs that they like? Everyone wants exotic Fiji water and a filet mignon, that is until they’re asked to pay $5 for a bottle of water or $50 for a dinner. People tend to settle for Dasani for $1.25 and a burger for $15 really quick when faced with those types of decisions.

Everything about this amendment is clearly meant to disrupt the normal legislative process as it stands today. From these massive sweeping bills that change so much about our lives, to setting end dates to old and archaic bills. And I think a lot of the changes made here would give the public in America a much needed moment of relief (after a initial period of exploration and discovery) with the current political climate due to the extra transparency.