Agreed Yichel , another badly needed piece of congressional reform is to make every single piece of pork or self-serving garbage a stand-alone bill , then the scum would have to come out in the open to vote on their garbage that they sneak through now .
posted by Dirck
about 1 month ago
I agree. I have also seen bill padding with unrelated items used to purposely get a bill vetoed. I personnally like the idea of make the administrative cost of our tax dollar no more than 15 to 20%. Another words, for every tax dollar you pay you get $.80 to $.85 cent benefit at a government administrative cost of $.15 to $.20. A consitutional admendment to that effect would automatically make government overhead more efficient and smaller while at the same time give us more return for our tax dollar and possibly even less tax dollars to have to pay. I say possibly because there is a 12 trillion dollar debt that needs to be paid down.
One congress member to another "Sure, I'll vote for you bill...if you will just add in this little $2.8M subsidy for the chicken fat ripple ice cream lobbyists - they're really having a tough go trying to get this item added to the school lunch program."
Here is an example of the Bills that were included in the Military Appropraition Bill.
view link
posted by mejk
about 1 month ago
SeaWood , this percentage of cost idea is a good one , but I have very little doubt that the thieves and bureaucrats would be able to fudge the numbers . Remember , these are the same people who created a new way of calculating inflation when they didn't like the nasty real numbers , and also created the magical birth/death adjustment that is used to magically create hundreds of thousands of mythical jobs to make the unemployment numbers look better each month than they really are .
posted by Dirck
about 1 month ago
Mi spent some time looking at the link. Do they purposely make it difficult to see how the add ons work? I could not trace the original bill and all the different types of additional stuff I was thinking name a bill HR 1234 the any amendments after the decimal HR1234.5 etc in the order they come up in the house. al that pas arer removed. nut he ptogression remains. Idid see some names but not in who is sponsoring by names in the title exampl the senator Kennedy service act...? To me when i red yjis one it seemed just more money yo dyplicate what amricorp is supposed to be doing?
posted by yichel
about 1 month ago
I seem to remember a candidate for president saying that he would go through every bill line by line and not allow any extras to be snuck in - no that I mention it, he was elected and now doesn't even want to let people read the bills before they are passed and he signs them. What a difference an election makes - to the politician.
posted by mejk
about 1 month ago
I remember more than one president asking for the right, but never received it, a line item veto. That power would be a very quick way to cleanup the add-ons (or should we call them cling-ons)
I really don't think would make a bit of difference with the 'head of state' that we are currently saddled with...
The line item veto IMHO will never pass. Why? Because it strips the bureaucrats of the very thing they need to buy votes with our money. I think we'd be better served to just vote the bastards out. Of course, this would mean taking the position that we cannot be bought either. If congressmen from our district attempt to bring the pork home to us by adding a line to an unrelated bill, we must hold them accountable. Most people vote their own wallets. When we wise up and get a sense of what's ethical and what's not, then we well begin to get a handle on the runaway spending in Washington.
