Toward more open government
You might or might not recall hearing that while the 2005 omnibus federal spending bill was in conference committee (where differences between House and Senate versions are negotiated or smoothed out) recently, someone slipped in a provision that would have allowed certain senior members of Congress access to anyone's personal or corporate income-tax return. Naturally, the provision was not discovered until after the bill had been voted on.
That provision, we are assured, is now dead, but it raises the question of why members of Congress so often must vote on measures neither they nor their staffs have had time to read.
Liberal blogger Josh Marshall has been discussing a suggestion one of his readers e-mailed him in the wake of this event: Changing House and Senate rules to require at least three days to pass before such a bill or reconciliation (what comes out of the conference committee, where competing versions of a bill are "reconciled") could be voted on. Taking that a step further, Marshall's reader asks, why could not such bills be made available publicly, via the Internet, for a certain minimum period before any vote? That way, the public could weigh in before the final vote.
As Marshall says, there are some reasons not to do things that way, but not any good reasons. I would agree. I'm not naive enough to think it would end the practice of sneaking things into bills in the dead of night, but it might help and it probably couldn't hurt. And there's no reason why we couldn't impose similar requirements upon the N.C. General Assembly, too, for that matter.
What do you think?