I think a lot of people, myself included, would like bills to be hyper focused and ban the use of riders.
There are a few reasons for this. One is that it is easier to keep track from the public perspective. A title should reflect the contents of the bill (in this case it is not obvious that bitcoin regulations are part of infrastructure). This could help reduce confusion and manipulation. It helps with transparency because it reduces the cognitive load (Note we can still talk about a "plan" or "package" that is a group of bills and so many conversations would stay the same).
The second part is that it helps reduce squabbling over nuance. A current bill might be 99% agreeable but that 1% is pretty contentious. If it was more compartmentalized then we could pass 99% of those things and get them in place faster rather than throwing the entire thing in the trash and restructuring (which often links back to the first point). This also reduces some of the toxic nature in politics where sometimes politicians add a component to nuke their own proposals so they can complain about it to their party's constituents.
This can probably be improved upon a lot but I think highlights the frustration with how things are done today and people are looking for systematic changes to fix those problems.
Without riders and earmarks there's no way to get someone to support your bill if they don't like the concept to start with. There's no downside for not supporting a bill, so cutting half of its provisions will still half to vote against. Riders and earmarks allow politicians to secure minor wins that they can sell to their electorate as the reason for supporting a bill.
And most of these things would simply never pass as standalone bills, being too small and local for Congress as a whole, and too expensive or cross-jurisdictional for state governments.
> Without riders and earmarks there's no way to get someone to support your bill if they don't like the concept to start with.
Why is this a problem? I see it as easier to call out politicians in public. Prevent the problems that are essentially: "Despite the 'Puppy and Sunshine' bill actually providing everyone with puppies and sunshine, we can't support it because it also summons the literal anti-christ to destroy the Earth. The puppies and sunshine is simply a trick to summon the anti-christ."
IMO doing so makes the bill far more transparent _to the public_.
> Riders and earmarks allow politicians to secure minor wins that they can sell to their electorate as the reason for supporting a bill.
I do not understand why such a thing could not happen without these nor with packages (as defined above).
> And most of these things would simply never pass as standalone bills
> "Despite the 'Puppy and Sunshine' bill actually providing everyone with puppies and sunshine, we can't support it because it also summons the literal anti-christ to destroy the Earth. The puppies and sunshine is simply a trick to summon the anti-christ."
Was this edgy strawman really useful?
> IMO doing so makes the bill far more transparent _to the public_.
How? The public that are engaged are still almost entirely getting their knowledge through the media, and they won't cover small bills due to lack of journalists, and more importantly, because readers aren't interested in them. I'm not sure who this mythical cohort who want to understand more about e.g. legislation that involves federal spending in Ohio, but can only do so by looking at every single small bill until they find "The Providing Ohio Reinvestment Kickback Bill" on page 23.
> I do not understand why such a thing could not happen without these nor with packages (as defined above).
Because there is only so much time available to get bills passed if nothing else, a bill focussing solely on niche and/or local issues are going to get bumped down the queue at every stage - in committee, getting scored for budgetary implications, getting floor time etc. - and there are two houses to make it worse.
> Do you not see that as a problem?
Well that depends on what it actually was of course.
The US system of government is at every level designed to prevent getting anything done, and so lots of things get lumped onto big bills that are likely to pass. I mean there's even a literal "omnibus bill" FFS. But the alternative is that "$1,000,000 for additional spaces at homeless shelters for transgender youth" isn't ever going to get to the floor, let alone pass in the House and get 60 votes in the Senate.
There are a few reasons for this. One is that it is easier to keep track from the public perspective. A title should reflect the contents of the bill (in this case it is not obvious that bitcoin regulations are part of infrastructure). This could help reduce confusion and manipulation. It helps with transparency because it reduces the cognitive load (Note we can still talk about a "plan" or "package" that is a group of bills and so many conversations would stay the same).
The second part is that it helps reduce squabbling over nuance. A current bill might be 99% agreeable but that 1% is pretty contentious. If it was more compartmentalized then we could pass 99% of those things and get them in place faster rather than throwing the entire thing in the trash and restructuring (which often links back to the first point). This also reduces some of the toxic nature in politics where sometimes politicians add a component to nuke their own proposals so they can complain about it to their party's constituents.
This can probably be improved upon a lot but I think highlights the frustration with how things are done today and people are looking for systematic changes to fix those problems.