Read the Bill

I realized it's been a while since I last wrote, however a transparency bill has been introduced recently that I hope our Representative Scott Garrett and the rest of the delegation from New Jersey will get behind: H. Res. 554.

Here's the purpose of the bill:

Amending the Rules of the House of Representatives to require that legislation and conference reports be available on the Internet for 72 hours before consideration by the House, and for other purposes.

Often is the case that you will see Garrett and other members of the House lament the short amount of time available to review a bill, yet the Resolution only has 1 primary and 4 co-sponsors.

Congress passes legislation almost every day that no one has read, except the staffers who wrote it and the lobbyists who helped them. We've seen it with everything from spending bills to the Patriot Act to the stimulus package. Often complained about by members, neither party's leadership seem willing to embrace the 72 hour practice.

The good people at the Sunlight Foundation are leading the charge to change this with ReadTheBill.org, which supports H. Res. 554. Everyone should be on board with this, because the idea of Congress enacting law without actually reading what they're voting on should be troubling to us all.