Our Constitution begins:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
From the earliest days of our Republic, we’ve considered and argued ways to improve its representation of citizens. We are a Republic, of elected representatives, not a direct Democracy (except in some states with direct initiatives to be voted upon).
In either case, legislation voted upon by legislators or directly by voters, the complexity of the issues at hand and of the language to express it, compounded by the number of pages of fine print, the confounding interactions, and the many unknowns, makes the task of understanding and judging often Herculean, Solomonic and Einsteinian all at once.
The strength, wisdom and knowledge of Hercules, Solomon and Einstein are simultaneously required when considering thousands of pages of tiny-type recasting 1/6th of the US economy and 100% of the health care received by 100% of our citizens. Put health care legislation together with the rushed economic legislation of the past 6-months, and we’re talking about 1/4th of the US economy recast. Add in the changes in tax code to come to pay for it all and you’re well past ½ the US economy remodeled. Literally everyone in the US, and indirectly most of the world, will be directly and seriously affected.
We’ve toyed with various adjustments, some legislated and some voluntary (usually obeyed only at the convenient whim and self-interest of elected representatives) to increase the deliberation and independence of legislators, and allow the public time and information to weigh in. For the most part, they’ve failed or been inadequate.
Not that they will be the ending solution, I’ll propose some more to bolster our and our legislators’ ability to make sounder decisions:
1. All members of legislative committees, entrusted by other legislative members with the detail evaluation of legislation, must attend all open and closed door meetings. That leads to wider and more careful deliberation. This duty is paramount over prestigious memberships in too many committees to be able to perform adequately in each.
2. All legislation must be publicly published on the Internet in full at least several weeks before detail hearings, to allow even minimal familiarity by those affected, the more knowledgeable, and by the public who has the right to transparency in order to know.
3. All legislative committee hearings must hear from an equal number of experts chosen by each political party, regardless of the weighting of party membership on the committee, to increase the likelihood of more information and views being heard.
4. All the members of each legislative committee must vote and publicly explain their vote.
5. All legislation funding or affecting more than one agency of government must either be broken down into its components for separate votes or be held for vote in the next biannual Congress once the public vote weighs in indirectly on the information received from hearings and legislators’ positions.
Yes, these reforms may slow some legislation, but experience with untoward consequences of haste and shadows makes that a positive result. Yes, these reforms will shift the workload of legislators toward deeper involvement with the details of legislation, the benefits of that being evident. Yes, true crises may require quick action at times, and if so there’s nothing to stop wise legislators from breaking such legislation into more carefully constructed and deliberated parts.
Yes, we can have a more perfect Union, more perfect Republic, closer to Democracy and to the capabilities of Hercules, Solomon and Einstein.
