I am surprised that there has never been a movement to reform legislative procedures making it more difficult to write omnibus legislation. Obviously, politicians would not favor it, but I certainly don’t hear anything about this in the grassroots. When I proposed this several months ago, some folks *cough*Joyner*cough* said something like it wouldn’t be constitutional, though I’m not sure that is true — Congress can create any procedures it wants for passing legislation so long as it conforms to the majority and supermajority provisions in the Constitution.
And after the SCOTUS ruling on McCain-Feingold, what the hell do we need a constitution for anyways?!
I would favor a movement advocating that all provisions within a bill address one specific issue and that a bipartisan committee or forum would determine whether legislation met those conditions. Of course this would slow down legislation (a good thing), and pols could probably manipulate it to some degree (a bad thing), but I think it would tend to limit some pork and force legislatures to make difficult choices on specific issues.
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