Bravo Bob Gale. I absolutely agree. In fact, after reading Mr. Gale's bio on the Big Hollywood blog, he may be my new hero:Earlier this year, Congress passed a “Stimulus” Bill. It was 973 pages long. This past Friday, the House passed a “Climate Change” Bill. It was more than 1200 pages long.
This got me wondering: how long, exactly, is our Constitution? How many pages did it take our country’s founders to lay out the structure and functions of our Federal Government?
Easy to answer. I found the Constitution online and copied it into a Word document, in Times New Roman 12 point type. So how long is it?
Including the preamble, all signatures and all 27 amendments, it’s 20 pages.
Without the signatures and amendments, it’s 11 pages.
Think about that. The entire foundation of our country - the complete design for our entire government — is clearly explained in only 11 pages.
No single Amendment is a full page. Many are only a single sentence.
Yet the bill that was passed on June 26, 2009 by 219 of our elected representatives — people to whom we’ve entrusted our Constitution, men and women who have sworn an oath to uphold it - was more than 1200 pages long. That’s over 100 times longer than the U.S. Constitution! And not one member of Congress, NOT ONE, read the whole thing!
A word comes to my mind to describe this: “INSANE.”
I cannot believe that this type of legislation and legislative behavior is what the signers of our Constitution intended when they invented Congress.
Therefore, I am respectfully proposing a 28th Amendment to our Constitution. I call it the Brevity Act.
No law, bill, resolution or any act of Congress shall exceed 2000 words, including all footnotes, amendments and signatures. Congress shall not vote on any item longer than that. Each item requiring a vote shall be read aloud in its entirety in session to a majority of members. Those not in attendance may not vote on the item.
2000 words is about 5 single spaced pages in a 12 point Word document. If it’s longer than that, then it’s too complicated to be a single law or bill, so it must either be cut or turned into multiple bills, each requiring a separate vote.
Furthermore, a Brevity Act should be part of every State Constitution, County Charter and City Charter.
To those who would oppose this Act because it would require Legislatures to vote separately on every single item in the budget, I say, it’s about time!
And to all challengers to the 219 Congressional morons who voted to pass a bill which they never read, here’s your campaign speech:
My opponent voted for a Bill he/she never read. Only an idiot would do that. Would you walk into a voting booth with a blindfold on and just push some buttons? Or would you read and consider what you’re voting on before you vote? I promise I will not vote for anything I haven’t read in its entirety.
Let the debate begin!
Bob Gale is a Screenwriter-Producer-Director, best known as co-creator, co-writer and co-producer of "Back to the Future" and its sequels. No need to mention his other credits here, that’s what IMDb is for. In addition to writing movies, Gale has written comic books including Spider-Man and Batman, thus proving to his father that he did not waste hours and hours reading comics in his youth. He has also served as an Expert Witness in over a dozen plagiarism cases, even though this has occasionally required him to wear a suit and tie (oh, the horror!). When he’s not in production, writing, shooting off his mouth or wasting time on the internet, he actually does take out the trash, even when his wife doesn’t ask. Well, sometimes he does…
3 comments:
The Brevity Act is a nice aspiration (and perhaps more humorous than serious), but its consequences would be worse.
First, shorter legislation would mean less precision. In turn, that would mean others would need to fill in the gaps. So, if you have a five-page bill on the environment, the EPA might need to issue 1,000 pages of regulations to interpret its terms. Alternatively, you might have more court fights over what language in the bill means.
Second, I don't know how you could pass the federal budget on five pages (even if you passed it in the seven bills or so that we do now) without pretty much writing a blank check to several agencies.
There is certainly humor there, but I like the basic idea. In addition to the 2,000 word bill, I would like an Excel spreadsheet to accompany any spending/funding bill showing each specific area of funding its projected costs. This would get around your blank-check problems, and would bring much more clarity. What I am in favor of, and I think is the implicit goal of any brevity act, is eliminating sausage making in legislation, and going to line-item legislation. Let the tenderloin legislation stand on its own, and expose the lips and buttholes for what they are. It an item can't pass on its own merits, it shouldn't pass.
I love the other stipulations in the proposed amendment - Reading each item aloud to a majority of members, and allowing only those present at the reading to vote. More information and accountability are always a good thing.
A legislative haiku:
Verbosity is
henceforth verboten, and why?
To save syllables.
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