WASHINGTON – Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., forced the Senate to begin reading all 628 pages of President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion COVID bill aloud on the Senate floor Thursday, further delaying a vote on the legislation Democrats hope to make law by next week. Johnson said his tactic was about “educating” the American public on what was in the $1.9 trillion package, which he has derided as full of provisions unrelated to COVID relief. The entire process could take at least 10 hours.'
Why such disdain for Senators actually showing US that they read the entire Bill before they vote on it?
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We can see now that the reason our laws are so messed up is because truly (especially when appropriations are involved) lawmakers do NOT know what they are voting on precisely because they rely on other "lawyers"" ( or staffers?) to tell them what is in the bill.
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They do it on purpose.
They vote solely on their "portion of interest". They spends hours lobbying and compromising US to get their "portion" included. Once they find it is, they stop reading. The rest is just the price or consequences we have to pay for their portion.
- It is another instance of "Create the problem to solve the problem.".
Bad lawmaking creates a bad legal system. Compromised lawmaking creates a compromised legal system. Bad lawmaking leads to bad law enforcement leads to bad lawyers leads to bad judges (and judgment) leads to bad prisons.
- Can it be fixed? Is there a remedy?
Start at the source--
Make it mandatory in the Senate to Read the entire Bill out loud before voting for transparency to US. Each and every Senator is expected to read the entire Bill before voting anyway. This way no Senator can claim they didn't know what was in the bill, and we can know their vote is made KNOWINGLY. Also, over time, we may see Bills be smaller and more easily understandable.
No bill should be longer than the Constitution. Founding Fathers created an entire new gov't in 4 pages.
This alone would solve so many problems.
Just as the other two branches have, congress has completely abdicated the process of authoring legislation to a third party. It's completely outside of the constitution's intention and designated responsibility. Legislation and the process of creating laws and appropriations has been bid out to other interested parties, regardless of whether or not they involve US interests. Treasonous.