I like this idea:
Perhaps what America needs is an authority whose sole job is to get rid of outdated, ill-conceived, or just plain bad laws.
This administration would certainly keep it busy.
I don’t know if this is the solution, but the system clearly is broken. The Founders would be appalled.
I still like my idea of a Sunset Amendment:
“All laws passed by the Congress shall remain in effect for no more than ten calendar years from the date of passage, at or prior to which time they must be repassed, or expire. All federal laws in existence at the time of passage of this amendment shall have staggered expiration dates, as a function of their age on the books, according to the formula, time-to-expire = 35 x (year-of-amendment-passage – 1787)/(year-of-amendment-passage – year-of-law-passage) + 5. Repassage of all existing laws will also have a lifetime of ten years.”
I’ve put some (but not a tremendous amount of) thought into this. The idea is to make the whole mess go away eventually, but you wouldn’t want to have a single date of expiration for all existing law–it would simply overwhelm the system. What I’m hoping for here is something that whelms the system only slightly, but enough to keep them so busy renewing important laws that they won’t have time to renew antiquated or bad ones, or to cause new mischief.
The formula has the earliest phaseouts (of the most recent laws) occur in five years, while the oldest laws (some of which, given their age, might have actually been good ones), can hang on as long as forty. The last sentence may be redundant, because it’s implied by the first sentence, but I want to make it clear that once law existing prior to amendment passage has been reauthorized, it has no special status among laws passed later–it is simply treated as any other newly-passed law.
There is a useful discussion of loopholes over comments at the old post.
“The Founders would be appalled.” How about “the present populace is appalled!” But most of us are prevented from fixing the system.
But now that I think about it, since most of us are going to lose our jobs soon, or have already, we’re going to have time to organize and protest and do all the helpful things the leftie lay-abouts have been doing for the past few decades.
More likely it would massively concentrate political funds & corporate funds in Washington proper, and on the Hill within Washington itself. The constant churn in corporate welfare & other give-aways would raise the return on lobbying investments, while putting a time-clock on the purchases. It would probably turn the House into the power-house it used to be before the rise of the Imperial Presidency.
I would expect a serious shift in power from the various bloated executive bureaucracies into a vastly increased lobbyist industry. That is, it would take away the organizational momentum that the current situation offers the executive departments, and create a “gold rush” mentality drawing resources into lobbying industries from every actual productive segment of the economy.
Also? I rather think that it would remove a lot of certainty from the economy. All in all, not a good idea. Classic “unintended consequences” material.
I agree that they are getting too much done and not much of it beneficial. I would rather they spend much less time there. After all we live in a digital world where most of what they do could be done on line. I think the founder would be more appalled at our lack of understanding of the system they created. The idea was to send representatives that were good businessmen and kind souled, thinking individuals. People, who would hold their noses as they traversed the swamp that is DC long enough to get the people’s business done; then return to the sane world from which they had come. Instead we have populated the city with people that actually like living in that cesspool. They have made careers out of a job that was designed to be done for only a few years then given to the next reluctant candidate. Until we get this right we will be compelled to fight against the wrongheaded notions these boobs propose from both sides of the isle. The incompetent will never perform adequately. Only when we send the reluctant and competent back to Washington will we see any real progress.
Mitch, I don’t see how you could come to that conclusion. If laws had a sunset date, the money paid to get them passed would have to be recouped before the sunset date. Currently, one can get a law passed and money flows to you indefinitely. Obviously putting a cap on the amount of time between bribes raises costs for the briber.
Raising costs for bribes is exactly what we are trying to accomplish. Congress may even go along with it – they have less work to do (fewer bribes) for the same revenue.
One idea I’ve been thinking about is a branch of the legislature whose sole job is taxation (and other government revenue sources). They would have no say at all on how money is spent by the government. As a result, they could not take credit for money sent to specific special interest groups, only for money that is NOT taken from the taxpayers. They’d run for office on the basis of how much they did or did not tax.
I share the enthusiasm for sunsets, though 10 years is sort of short. I was thinking 20 for most laws and 30 for criminal felonies.
I like the House of Repeal idea though. Make someone campaign on his record for repealing bad laws!
Another thought I had (though a House of Repeal may be better) is to make different percentages of the Congress necessary to pass laws and to repeal them. For instance, you might need 75% approval to pass a law but only 33% to repeal it.
My favorite part of the Confederate Constitution is the “single topic” clause, requiring all bills to have a descriptive title and all parts within the bill to substantially relate to that topic.
One of the things I liked about Obama (until his broke his campaign pledge in record time) was the idea of a public airing of law before signing. I think we would be greatly improved as a nation if Congress only met for voting twice a year and no law could be voted on that hadn’t been publicly posted in final form for at least 30 days prior to the session.
Texas has a sunset provision for agencies. It has bit them this legistlative session, as TxDOT wasn’t continued (a special session that just ended took care of the issue). It would have been continued, but House Democrats decided to go home a day early, because they don’t enjoy doing their job unless they are in power. Anyway, it works pretty well for Texas.
David, my thought was that currently interested parties can make a short-term investment in a lobbying effort & then coast on just enough to keep it from showing up adversely in a new bill. A sunsetting provision would cause participants in the politicized economy to become much more… forward & deeply invested in the lobbyist effort. My instinct is that it would at the same time cut existing, passive rent but vastly increase the need for rent-seeking, with all the ancillary overhead costs of said rent-seeking. Would they cancel out? I don’t think so, I suspect that we’d see an increase in dead loss, especially in the corruption factor.
I’m kind of interested in the branch-of-repeal notion. I was complaining a few months ago about how they never repeal laws any more. An assembly of political grim reapers would make for a different dynamic, that’s for sure. The impulse would be for lobbyists to attempt to stymie and render inactive the new house – and the incentive for a body of government which the lobbyist wants to *do nothing* seems… promising. It would definitely tend to breed a useful mind-set in the arm-hangers of the Hill.
“One of the things I liked about Obama (until his broke his campaign pledge in record time)”
Most of us saw that coming a mile away, Brock. I’m shocked you believed him – about any of his promises.
Actually, I worry more about the promises that he keeps, but that no one seemed to pay much attention to.
Any patchwork of laws is going to end up an abomination. Keeping a law focused to one topic helps. The incentive to make laws that give unfair advantage to one group over others is just too great.
Sunsetting is a idea that avoids the real solution… sometimes it’s good just to start over.
It might be good to have a no confidence provision. No need to impeach on the basis of some criminal act. Any state can vote no confidence at any time. Once 26 states vote no confidence that person is immediately removed from office. This would apply to president, senators and federal judges.
Did you really? I mean, is there any evidence of that? It’s easy to imagine yourself having thought so, but I wonder.
Regardless, I was more worried at the time about the promises he “threatened” to keep, and I have been frequently relieved by his reneging on so many of them (lets hope for more!). But the “waiting period” promise of his seemed to make sense (to me) and didn’t openly contradict any of this other positions, so I had hope it would be kept. Oh well.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve toyed with the idea of an “escrow account” for campaign donations, where American citizens can aggregate their campaign donations behind specific causes. Imagine if you will the Cato Foundation accepting donations in escrow to be disbursed upon actual passage of free trade agreements. That way you get performance for your donations, not just empty promises.
Yes we did, really. About the time he stated that the Constitution was “fundamentally flawed.” And _that_ was before he was running. Some of us pointed it out, even. I wish I had been more computer savvy back then, I could have been louder. Maybe that would have made me a target like that poor plumber guy.
For me, I started sliding to opposition when I read through his policies. The final nail in the coffin was when he sealed the nomination in the early Summer of 2008 and repositioned himself, including reversals of several primary positions he had like his vote on FISA. It’s worth noting that McCain despite his flaws never did that.
Now, I’m looking at the prospect of another FDR presidency with the ability to pass bad laws that will outlive me. Believe me, a sunset amendment looks very nice right now.
I’d add a provision: when law(s) are renewed, they must be voted on individually. Otherwise, you’ll see 1000+ page monster bills thrown together in the middle of the night and voted on w/o knowledge of the contents. Or, logrolling, where some marginal laws are bundled with a no-brainer like “axe-murderers aren’t welcome in society” so nobody will dare vote to allow murder.
If you’re trying to weed out the good from the bad, you’ve got to make that separation the default state as well.