A Comatose Congress Is The Best Congress
Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today about the mistaken belief that Congress is doing a good thing by passing a whole bunch of laws:
A recent article in The Hill described the now-adjourned 113th Congress as "historically unproductive," observing that "few Congresses have sent less bills to a president in 20 years."This, I'm afraid, reflects a common journalistic belief that when legislatures are passing legislation, they're producing something valuable. But while it's true that when oil wells produce oil, or gold mines gold or automobile factories cars, those entities are being productive, it's not so clear that every time a legislature passes a law it's producing something of value. In fact, there's good reason to suspect just the opposite.
When Congress passes a law, it is pretty much always either limiting someone's freedom or spending taxpayer money. Sometimes those are good things: The civil rights laws of the 1960s took away the freedom to engage in racial discrimination, and the spending of World War II and the Cold War defeated the evils of Nazism and Communism.
But most congressional action doesn't rise to that level, and much of it -- things like pork-barrel projects or bills that protect special interests from competition -- is a net loss. Even worse, once legislation is enacted, it becomes very difficult to repeal.
He argues for creating "a legislative body that can only repeal laws":
Nobody in Congress gets much in the way of votes by repealing laws. All the institutional pressures point the other way.So in a third house of Congress -- let's call it the House of Repeal -- the only thing that the elected legislators would have the power to do would be to repeal laws, meaning that for them, all the votes, campaign contributions, media exposure and opportunities for hearings would revolve around paring back the federal behemoth. It's an extension of James Madison's principle (or, possibly, Alexander Hamilton's) enunciated in Federalist No. 51 that, since politicians are always ambitious, in a free society "ambition must be made to counteract ambition."
Though the details, as with all constitutional provisions, matter a lot, the key virtue of a House of Repeal goes beyond the details: The point of its existence would be to give someone in the federal government an incentive to give us less law rather than more.
☑ Really interesting idea.
But it might turning into a fully-circuitous Sneetch-loop, where you pay one government office to open up your markets while your competitor visits another to shut them down again, and you cross on the sidewalk going to the other guy's last destination. That's kind of what we've got now.
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 22, 2014 11:50 PM
Hmm, interesting point, Crid.
Amy Alkon at December 23, 2014 6:05 AM
Actually, we can get around Crid's quite valid point simply by enabling sunset provisions in the the laws when they pass.
Say authorize the legislation for 4 or 6 years, then require reauthorization to keep it on the books. Laws that don't work, or are counter-productive can be allowed to lapse quietly, laws that do work can be reauthorized quietly (or noisily), and controversial law can be debated heatedly.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 23, 2014 9:29 AM
"Laws that don't work, or are counter-productive" unfortunately many laws work just the way the originator wanted them too, which is not the way they were advertized to.
Take Obamacare- Advertized as a help for the poor, and to slow down the rampant increasing Health care pricing, but I feel the real purpose was to self destruct while pointing us toward single payer. In which case I think it is right on track.
Too many laws are passed with the real reason, my state or my friends get X contract. As long as they get the $ from that contract, they don't care it does the opposite of what it was advertized to do.
Joe J at December 23, 2014 10:21 AM
One of the problems with representation, either on the Federal or state level, is that once someone is elected, they are expected to be productive. Constituents typically aren't satisfied with someone who goes to Washington, DC to sit on their butt and vote on legislation. It is anticipated that those who are elected will give back to their people and come up with bills that will benefit them. This is why we get so much silly stuff that gets killed in committee. That way, the elected official can say, "I tried to get something passed, but that other party just refused to see things my way."
Fayd at December 23, 2014 12:31 PM
> simply by enabling sunset provisions
> in the the laws when they pass.
Nope. Read this: There are already many entirely predictable and unremarkable entitlements for which outlays could be arranged with a single vote.
But congress insists on approving them once per term, so they can go back home to campaign—
Crid [CridComment at Gmail] at December 23, 2014 3:09 PM
Leave a comment