

Congressional leaders fight against posting bills online - miked
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Congressional-leaders-fight-against-posting-bills-online-8340658-63557217.html

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fnid
The only shocking thing: _Nearly every Republican has signed on, but the
Democratic leadership is unwilling to cede control over when bills are brought
to the floor for votes and are discouraging their rank and file from signing
the petition._

The more I follow politics, the more I realize how similar the republicans and
democrats are. Their behavior flips with power. If GWB was in office, it would
be have been the democrats supporting the bill. I wonder really, why _didn't_
the democrats support this? Would the republicans have supported such a
measure for the Patriot Act? Why not require this for every bill? Why do the
Republicans only want it on _this_ bill?

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ckinnan
While true that disclosure aids the minority party, and both sides pay some
degree of lip service to the issue of transparency, it is still important for
American democracy that our political leaders make bills available to the full
Congress and to the public for at least 72 hours before a vote.

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tptacek
Looks like a misleading headline. This isn't about posting bills online;
online bills is a canard being used to promote a 72-hour waiting period on
bills.

There are arguments for or against the 72-hour waiting period (the GOP
proposal, like similar arguments made during the Bush presidency by Dems, is
crafted to increase the ability of the minority to delay action by the
majority; it isn't simply a "good-governance" measure). But they have little
directly to do with whether bills can be posted online.

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DanielStraight
72 hours even sounds like too little time.

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hughprime
I agree. How about six months? All the major issues have been festering for
years, what's an extra six months of delay?

Remember, the government can't build a new road without three years of
planning, community consultation, environmental impact statements, mandatory
waiting periods, careful negotiation with all stakeholders, and whatever other
bureaucracy might crop up along the way. But when the government wants to pass
a bill to spend a trillion bucks or fundamentally change the nature of the
economy, they seem to think that about twelve hours is the ideal length of
time to spend debating it.

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tptacek
72 hours? Six months? How about a year?

What we need is a better process for informing people about the issues
involved in legislation. But we don't run congress by referenda, and whether
or not legislators "read" bills is irrelevant: they're voting based on
political calculation and personal principles, and nothing is going to change
that.

~~~
lionhearted
> ...and whether or not legislators "read" bills is irrelevant: they're voting
> based on political calculation and personal principles, and nothing is going
> to change that.

I think we should try change it. It's a horrible state of affairs.

~~~
hughprime
The best thing about posting bills online for six months is that it doesn't
matter that legislators don't read them. Instead you'd have an army of
partisan bloggers etc trying to point out the flaws, ensuring that all the
bill's flaws would get brought to the surface eventually, and at least some of
those should get amended away.

~~~
tptacek
The average SnR on bills on OpenCongress is terrible. Most bills require
expertise to really analyze; the people with expertise and the will to apply
it are already chiming in on bills. I don't want to sound apathetic, but I'm
not convinced about the wonderful powers of public peer review on legislation.

Roger Ebert's blog is amazing, and one of the reasons is that he generates
amazingly thoughtful comments. He even managed to do a debate on creationism,
in the context of Ben Stein's movie! Here's what happens when he does
something overtly political. Note the comments.

[http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/the_anger_of_the_fes...](http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/10/the_anger_of_the_festering_fri.html)

(Something to notice: _1200_ \+ comments later, and he is _still responding to
comments_. The guy is a machine.)

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chasingsparks
While I support a 72-hour public review period, I think there are ways to
exploit public interest that would render it less effective. However, a
72-hour review period coupled with rules against omnibus laws would be very
efficient (IMO). The laws that reach the floor would be very specific.
Congressional records could not be obfuscated with "well I wanted this, so I
compromised and voted for that as well".

Although...I think congress would still find a way around such rules.

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kelnos
"For the majority party, legislative timing plays a big role in whether a bill
will pass because support can be fleeting."

Perhaps your bill doesn't deserve to pass if you can't even keep your
supporters on your side for more than 12 hours or so...

