On Wed, Jan 7, 2009 at 1:37 PM, William Bowen <[email protected]> wrote: > heh. > > I was just wondering if there were *any* examples at all :-P > > Pretty willing to bet it's a null set...
Well, last Congress enacted new rules regarding anonymous holds and publicly disclosing earmarks that I could consider steps toward transparency. For some time Congress has theoretically had PAYGO rules which would require budgetary offsets for increased spending. Obviously those haven't worked too well. Hoyer says that the new Rules package in the House has stronger PAYGO language but I'm skeptical. It could be argued that Bush laid out hard caps on what he considered acceptable budgetary numbers and threatened a veto for any budgets coming in over those numbers. But then he did most of his spending through supplemental requests which totally blew the minuscule efforts at reigning in the main budgets all to hell. One of the biggest proposals, for me, coming out of the new administration is a rule that congressional legislation would have to be posted online for something like 5 days before it is voted on unless its an absolute emergency. I can see all these "emergencies" cropping up whenever its convenient, but I like the basic principle. The stuff the people willingly vote into law scares me enough. The crap that they vote on without reading let alone understanding? Jesus. And that's how we get force fed a pile of steaming horseshit like the Patriot Act. Its going to be hard enough to get people to care about legislation. The very least we could do toward that end is let them see if and have time to form an opinion. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;207172674;29440083;f Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:284148 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
