EckerNet.Com

It\’s always a please when members of Congress get a little too honest.

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

So he\’s not going to read the bill because he couldn\’t understand it even if he did.  Sounds like a problem right?

Oh and I don\’t mean the problem is with him, although you could probably make a convincing case, but believe it or not I sympathize.  For both personal interest and for political research, I\’ve dived into no small number of bills both at the state and federal level and they are written in an entirely different language not known to common man.

However, that shouldn\’t be an excuse to not do your job.  I\’d say you\’re using one problem to justify another, when you should be fixing one or both problems.  Bills are long, arduous and impossible to understand.  Well there is a fix for that.  Limit the scope of bills and simply them.

Don\’t believe it can be done? The Constitution setup our entire system of government in only 4543, including the signatures.  The Magna Carta laid the basis for our entire system of law in roughly 2500 words (count varies by the version you reference).   Yet I\’m sure the federal regulations on the import of turnips is probably several tens of thousands of words in length.

And if it\’s hard to read, simplify it.  True they are written in legalese in order to make the meaning precise, but that doesn\’t mean they can\’t be made easier to understand.  If you\’re going to say \”ignorance of the law is no defense\”, certainly you have an obligation to make that law understandable to the common man yeah?  And I\’m certain to a great degree that limiting the length of such legislation would aid this venture a great deal.

It\’s a worth goal to be sure, and it would certainly save me quite a few headaches.  But simply claiming \”I\’m too stupid to do my job\” is less of an excuse and more of a reason you shouldn\’t have that job.  If your job is too complex, either get out or else simplify it down to your level.  And if you actually accomplish that, then great, because then we can start teaching constitutional law in third grade…..in between Political Correctness class and Global Climate Change class of course.