"It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man who knows what the law is today can guess what it will be to-morrow."
Federalist No. 62
With ObamaCare having thousands of pages is it reasonable that the average citizen could understand the bill? It is bad enough that a large majority of our representatives are lawyers, but when you have to be a lawyer to understand what proposed legislation means, is there a problem?
Ignorance is no excuse for the law, which you may have learned if you were pulled over because you didn't notice that the speed limit changed from 70 to 55 on that section of highway. Maybe you missed one of the hundreds of hoops that a new business must jump through because you didn't know you needed to, will the IRS care? We are held accountable to the law regardless of our understanding of it. The prevents continual claims of ignorance as legitimate defense to habitual crime, which makes sense.
If we are going to be held accountable to the law, shouldn't we demand laws that we have a reasonable expectation to understand? What is reasonable? Well I would think that we shouldn't have to invest more than a few evenings studying the bill to read and understand it's impact. We shouldn't have to have a law degree to understand the language of the Bill. Bills should deal with individual issues and not be "Omni" in nature (deal with multiple unrelated other legislations).
Would these requirements for reasonable expectation of understanding make it harder to write legislation? Maybe, or it might make it easier, it doesn't matter. The point is that these representatives and the legislation they produce are supposed to serve us citizens. We must be able to evaluate legislation, without specialized education or an unreasonable amount of time, in order for us to judge our representatives efforts on our behalf.
In the end we are a Democratic Republic, not a true Democracy, and so our representatives should do what they believe is best for the country as a whole, while protecting the interest of their constituency. I do not propose that all citizens should vote on all legislation directly, but we MUST have a reasonable ability to evaluate the results of our representation.
More people need to be reading you- I really like this blog! Your voice needs to be heard out there! You are direct and easy to understand...about issues that are difficult for some to navigate. You remind me of Sarah Palin the way you can cut through to the main point of something, make it clear and inspire me all at the same time. Thank you for the thoughtful way you use your talent!
ReplyDeleteAw-Shucks! I'm turning bright red! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks, it would be fun to get published in a newpaper or magazine...maybe I will try it.
As for reminding you of Sarah Palin....I went rogue a long time ago!
How many pages (max) of legislation per bill would be considered (by you) a reasonable amount of time to evaluate?
ReplyDeleteI understand pages don't correlate directly into time, but every person has an approximate reading speed at which they comprehend best.
Well we can argue all day about what is reasonable...reasonable people can have a difference of opinion, but it is safe to say we could cut the average bill in half and it still wouldn't be reasonable.
ReplyDeleteYou might wonder how the government would do all the things it currently does without using all those pages, well, I would hope that it wouldn't. One advantage of limiting the actual size of a bill would be to limit how much they could cram into it.
It may be better to limit scope of legislation in other ways, say by directly related subjects, instead of, or maybe in addition to page count.
I am open to discussing what might be better, but I do know we are not going in the right direction. Step one in triage is to treat any life threatening conditions. Step two is to work on treating less urgent problems. Once we staunch the serious bleeding of our liberty, we can decide how many stitches are required to heal completely.
Thank you for the powerful quote:
ReplyDelete"Let's face it, the Union is strained, stressed, and stagnate, but not strong. We have traded opportunity for protection and liberty for fairness."
And to paraphrase Franklin "that means we deserve neither!"
This was a VERY interesting piece.
Thanks JINGOIST!
ReplyDeleteYes, Franklin would most likely say we have what we deserve based on the choices WE have made. The good news is, if we realize our mistake, we can overcome it and right our course.