This is the most complicated of the planks in my proposed platform, but that's because it's going to take a lot to reform the government. The first goal here is to make individuals in government more responsive to the needs of the citizenry by putting them on the same ground as the citizen, eliminating special privileges and immunities that allow them to callously destroy lives, careers, businesses, etc. An equally important goal is to restore public faith in the institutions of government.
Part 1: Let's begin with Rand Paul's proposed constitutional amendment that no law can be made "applicable to a citizen of the United States that is not equally applicable to Congress ... the executive branch of Government ... the judges of the Supreme Court ... and judges of such inferior courts as Congress may from time to time ordain and establish." Then let's expand it to do away with judicially created immunities, as proposed by the Sage of Knoxville.
Part 2: Require laws to be written in common language and require a review period of 1 business day for each 10 pages in a bill. Once introduced, no vote can be taken on a bill until its review period has passed. Any changes to the bill require a new review period based on the total number of pages in the bill. The review period could be circumvented in the case of local or national emergencies, but only for bills that deal solely with the emergency (i.e., if someone tacked on an amendment for building an amusement park, the bill would have to go through the normal review period).
Part 3: Work together with private transparency organizations to create better transparency laws. Work with privacy organizations to create safeguards for privacy from government snooping. Put teeth into transparency and privacy laws by making non-compliance or overly-long response times by government officials or employees crimes, potentially leading to prison sentences.
Part 4: Another pair of Instapundit suggestions:
A. Cut pay to Congress and cut presidential travel when they haven't passed a budget.
B. If a government official or employee takes a lobbying or other private, government-related job within five years of leaving office, they must pay a 50% tax on that income.
4 comments:
This is a good start.
I suggest a couple of tweaks, though. Re 2: sunset all Federal laws--every one of them--in, say, three, years, unless they're actively and individually debated and renewed--but only for a fixed number of years, by the end of which they need to be debated anew, and renewed anew for the same fixed number of years. Any law that isn't renewed is rescinded by that failure to renew. That will force the existing set of laws to be prioritized, publicly, and debated, with a large number rescinded, since the Congress won't get through them all. Further, all new laws passed get a short initial period before they sunset, unless they're actively..., entering the sunset/renew process.
A minor thing on 3: rather than making "too slow" a crime, I'd be inclined to require detailed, actionable reasons for saying "No" mandatory, and any failure to answer within the short time limit an automatic release criterion. Court cases involving "detailed, actionable" should either get fast-tracked or magistrate judges subordinate to Article III judges created for the speciality of hearing these cases.
Re 4B: the constitutional amendment proposed in a related thread concerning terms in office should adequately address this. I'm disinclined to use tax policy for anything other than funding government, especially including not for social engineering.
Eric Hines
Another thing the Sage of Knoxville often suggests (I always intended that title to be a genuine compliment, though in the early days I think he may have mistaken it for mockery) is expanding personal liability for abuses of power by government officials. I think that's got to be part of any solution.
Grim, I believe limiting immunity would do that.
Eric,
I like the sunsetting law idea. I really do. How would it be implemented, though? For laws going forward, the language could be inserted into the bill stating that the entire contents would be sunsetted in 3 years. But what about the other masses of rules in the CFR and the regulatory guides and IRS administrative publications and guidelines?
I guess my main concern is how do we make it so the entire CFR and regulations are just not renewed, via a similar process like the budget can gets kicked down the road? I foresee something like the "Lawlessness and Chaos Prevention Act of 2014" that just says everything stays in place.
Call my Mr. Cynical I guess.
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