Riders

[Skye]

Lately I've read about a few Bills passing through the US Congress with 'riders' attached. These riders are sometimes unrelated things that would get voted down on their own. I'm wondering why these were originally allowed, it seems a flaw in the system that people can pass legislation without it being really assented to, or sometimes even noticed. Does anyone in the US think it's worth changing?

[-Demosthenes-]

There were originally allowed, but usually the system will filter out un-wanted riders even on a wanted bill. There have been presidents who have vetoed bills because of riders, and usually the bill goes back and passes without it, even though they don't need the president's signature anymore. There was a line-veto (is that what it was called?) once, but it was thrown out because it was too unconstituional because it gave to much power to the executive branch. It was a clever way to deal with riders, but it wasn't quite right.

[Douglas]

I don't know how these unrelated "riders" came to pass, but yes, I think it should be changed. It just a sneaky way for a congressperson to pass a pet project without introducing to to congress.

 

If the President had the powers of the "line item veto", the problem would at least be diminished. To my knowledge, the line "line item veto" is unconstitutional.

[Dave]

I think possibly the worst instance of this happened very recently. A bill to increase expenditure for those killed/injured in the armed forces was passed about a week ago. Tagged onto it is the so-called "Real ID Act" which gives the Department of Homeland Security the power to do practically whatever they want in terms of tracking people and amassing a large quantity of data on people. For instance, they might want to introduce ID cards a la Blair. However, they can just do it on a whim and decide themselves exactly what they want to store.

 

And, of course, nobody is going to oppose the bill its tacked onto because if they did, it would show them in a not-very-good light. And all in the name of the "war on terror". Does anyone else feel this phrase is being overused?

 

You can find more details at: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/11/real_id_makes_terrorists_happy/

[Pangloss]

That's a good example, but one of the things that I think has happened in the past few years is that Americans are paying a lot more attention to this stuff. The rising popularity of Fox News, Air America, The Daily Show, and of course the big political stories such as the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, have really raised awareness of political issues in general in this country. I'm hopeful that this will make it a lot harder to do this sort of thing.

 

Of course the flip side of that coin is that the spin doctoring has gotten a lot worse, and with any major issue you see the talking heads come out of the woodwork to support this or oppose that, and obscure the truth.

 

But I'll take that over the complete absence of information, I suppose.