Sometime ago I wrote a piece as an op-ed columnist for the Staunton News Leader. In it, and related to this subject, I called for something a bit different than the remedy suggested here.
Although reading legislation would be nice, pledges of doing same aside, pledge compliance would be hard/impossible to verify, was it a careful or careless reading is somewhat of a subjective matter in the eye of the beholder, and “the reading it solution” misses one critical aspect of a legislator's vote--that individual's committed-to thinking and rationale for his or her vote at the time of that vote.
I believe our Legislative Branch of federal government needs to do essentially what the judicial branch does and go one step farther--issue written INDIVIDUAL opinions. If such were done, we wouldn't be guessing years later why a given legislator voted as he did on a given piece of legislation, and we would eliminate the possibility of rewriting history--well at least in this limited aspect.
If a legislator is voting for or against a given piece of legislation due to an amendment as opposed to the main body of the legislation or is really voting for or against an earmark—again, I believe we as citizens have a right to know what the thinking (at least the publicly committed to story regarding the thinking) is contemporaneous to the time of the vote.
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Sometime ago I wrote a piece as an op-ed columnist for the Staunton News Leader. In it, and related to this subject, I called for something a bit different than the remedy suggested here.
Although reading legislation would be nice, pledges of doing same aside, pledge compliance would be hard/impossible to verify, was it a careful or careless reading is somewhat of a subjective matter in the eye of the beholder, and “the reading it solution” misses one critical aspect of a legislator's vote--that individual's committed-to thinking and rationale for his or her vote at the time of that vote.
I believe our Legislative Branch of federal government needs to do essentially what the judicial branch does and go one step farther--issue written INDIVIDUAL opinions. If such were done, we wouldn't be guessing years later why a given legislator voted as he did on a given piece of legislation, and we would eliminate the possibility of rewriting history--well at least in this limited aspect.
If a legislator is voting for or against a given piece of legislation due to an amendment as opposed to the main body of the legislation or is really voting for or against an earmark—again, I believe we as citizens have a right to know what the thinking (at least the publicly committed to story regarding the thinking) is contemporaneous to the time of the vote.
Any thoughts?
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