Taking a step to restoring common sense to the legislative process

December 6, 2022

There are problems with the Congressional process of writing legislation. This process should be simple and straight-forward: if a representative or senator has a proposal he or she believes would benefit the country, it should be written up in the appropriate manner and submitted for consideration.

Usually, this would take several pages, but not hundreds of pages, as some bills do. It also would not involve some number of items added to a bill that are not related to the stated purpose of the bill.

These days we find proposed legislation of hundreds and hundreds of pages and many additional items, some or most of which do not relate to the bill’s purpose.

Unrelated items that are included are designed to serve other purposes. They frequently are used to benefit some particular special interest group or a political purpose that the proponent seeks to help by adding items to the bill that have nothing to do with its stated purpose. 

The authors believe these little goodies will slide through because the main purpose of the bill is a good one, and anyone who doesn’t vote for it will suffer bad press and political negatives for opposing it. If each of these items were required to be in a bill of their own, this tactic would be rendered useless, and legislation that achieves approval would be much cleaner, more appropriate, and less harmful.

Sometimes a bill is so long that in the busy atmosphere of legislative work some representatives and senators simply cannot read every word and effectively study the bill in the amount of time allotted before a vote is scheduled. They then are only partially prepared to cast a knowledgeable vote.

Nancy Pelosi, the Democrat Representative from California whose tenure as Speaker of the House blessedly ends with the 117th Congress on December 31, once said something to the effect of, “we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.”

No, that isn’t the way a democratic republic passes legislation.

Republican Representative Morgan Griffith represents Virginia’s Ninth Congressional District, which covers 19 counties completely, and parts of three others, and is the Congressman for our region of the Commonwealth.

In one of his regular emails to his constituents, titled “Return to the Basics,” Griffith cites the need for changes, and says with the control of the House of Representatives moving to the Republican Party in the 118th Congress, it is time to make needed changes to the Rules of the House.

Of his suggestions, he wrote, “Most of these amendments restore old rules or clarify existing rules. It would mean a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.” And, he recently testified before the House Rules Committee to offer those amendments to the rules.

He suggested restoring the Holman Rule, which was created in 1876. It was a tool that could cut government spending.

“One of my proposed rules changes is to restore the Holman Rule, which existed for more than 100 years,” he wrote. “[T]he Holman Rule was created by Congressman William Holman … [who] thought spending was out of control.”

“The Holman Rule allows representatives to offer retrenchment amendments on the floor of the House of Representatives to appropriations bills,” Griffith wrote. “Retrenchment means these amendments could rearrange an agency or department of the Federal Government to cut specific programs, positions, or salaries. In 2017, I revived this rule for the 115th Congress, but in 2019 Speaker Pelosi dismantled this tool,” he wrote.

He also suggested a change to the germaneness rule, that would only allow amendments to a bill that pertained to the bill’s purpose, and suggested that a bill could only have one purpose. He also suggested that those limitations could not be waived without a two-thirds vote of the House.

“Shouldn’t a bill address one issue and be straight forward,” he asked? “My single purpose rule would make it so. This rule would still allow for complex bills like an infrastructure bill. However, two bills or concepts could not be combined into a single bill unless their purposes were the same. For example, a bill to set doctors’ reimbursement rates under Medicare could not be amended into a rewrite of Medicare. To rewrite Medicare would require a separate bill.”

“Additionally, I proposed an amendment to set time limits for bill introduction. This would focus individual members on bills that the members are most passionate about,” Griffith wrote. “It would also reduce the practice of introducing a bill on the cause celebre of the day for publicity purposes,” and “allows a remedy for bills that are ‘truly’ important by giving members the ability to ask the House for permission to introduce their ‘vital’ bill late.”

These common-sense ideas, and others included in Griffith’s email, would go a long way to restoring the legislative process to a form that is straight forward, efficient, and offers more protection from political manipulation than the current process. As he wrote, “a return to the basics of parliamentary procedure.”

Is it too much to hope that a majority of House members will agree with these good ideas, and vote to adopt them?

The infrastructure bill highlights what is wrong with Congress

The bill H.R. 3684, the Infrastructure Investments and Jobs Act, known simply as the “infrastructure bill,” has been a controversial product from day one. 

The Democrat majority attempted to get a vote to pass the bill before it was even fully written. Yeah, what a wonderful idea: let’s vote to approve a bill before it’s written. What could possibly go wrong?

This situation is a serious contender for the dumbest idea dealing with pending legislation in our nation’s history.

Next, the bill is 2,702 pages long. Most books I read take many hours from start to finish, and most of them are not only a fraction of this bill’s length, usually 300 to 500 pages, but also have much smaller pages with fewer words.

The Christian Bible has about 1,300 pages and about 800,000 words. That makes this Democrat bill twice as long as the Bible. Another way of understanding how long this bill is: compare it to these weekly columns. Each weekly column word-count target is 858 words, give or take a few. Dividing 800,000 by 858 equals 932.4, or enough weekly columns to fill 17.9 years.

The International Christian College and Seminary tells us that it takes approximately 70 hours and 40 minutes to read the Bible. Extrapolating that to the infrastructure bill, someone who read the bill continuously from start to finish in one sitting would spend more than 140 hours, or six days, reading it. With time out to eat, sleep, visit the restroom, and other normal things, add more days. And experts tell us that reading federal legislation is a more difficult read than most books. It takes study time, in addition to reading time.

“These bills are not written for even the educated layperson, Ross Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, said. “They are written for specialists.” His comment was made back in 2009 when the Affordable Care Act and the Health and Education Reconciliation Act were under consideration. Those two bills dwarfed the infrastructure bill, adding up to 10,516 pages in the Federal Register.

This bill is simply way too big, in both length and dollars spent. It’s a safe bet that few if any of our representatives and senators will have personally read and studied the entire bill. Much of the work will be done by staff, and some topics may simply be accepted as good and proper without anyone actually reading or studying them. Is that really the best way to do things?

Furthermore, there is no emergency demanding that one ridiculously long bill that spends more than a trillion dollars be created and voted on. Truly important measures will have bipartisan support, and can be easily passed individually, or in small groups of two or three closely related topics, and a few dozen pages. 

Within its 2,702 pages the bill contains 10 divisions, and most of those could easily be, and should be, addressed as separate bills to be debated and voted on over time, rather than crammed through all at once.

One part of the bill proposes spending $110 billion for roads, bridges, and major projects. That’s a bunch of money. Will it all be spent on really needed projects? Or will some of it be used for pet projects that benefit some special interests?

Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute addressed some specific features: “The bill also contains various faddish ideas like elements of the Green New Deal and ‘Buy American’ provisions, all of which will simply increase costs to American consumers for no discernible benefit. Many of my criticisms of the president’s infrastructure plan as being bloated and wasteful continue to apply to this bill.”

“Finally, several Democrats have made it clear that they view this as the first of a two-part package,” Murray’s evaluation continued, “the second being a budget reconciliation bill with $3.5 trillion of new spending and a variety of progressive wish-list items that would seek to turn the U.S. into a European-style social democracy, with a vastly expanded welfare state. Again, it appears that the plan is to rush this through on the back of the infrastructure bill without proper scrutiny.”

One feature of the $1.2 trillion bill that appears to breach President Joe Biden’s “red line” pledge not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400,000 a year is a “national motor vehicle per-mile user fee pilot program,” which would affect most drivers. Calling it a “fee” instead of a “tax” will do little to soothe the pain that drivers will have to endure when they drive to and from work or on vacation to help fund this massive spending plan.

And then we must ask, will there be the need for a “Mileage Czar” with a bloated staff to keep track of these taxes?

There is a need to address real infrastructure issues in the country. But the most important, the most critical area of need today, is securing the southern border. Thousands of illegal aliens, many of whom are gang members, drug dealers, and Covid-infected, enter this country every week. This bill does not address that. Congress needs to address the criminal nature of the border crisis first.

Dems are frivolously spending money under guise of pandemic relief

In an early-morning vote last Saturday, President Joe Biden’s 591-page American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 passed the full House by a 219-212 vote along party lines. This plan would borrow and spend $1.9 trillion to, we are told, combat the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic.

There is roughly $825 billion aimed at actual COVID-related spending. So where is the rest of the spending going? The majority of funds, according to the Editorial Board of The Wall Street Journal, is dedicated to “expansions of progressive programs, pork, and unrelated policy changes.” 

“Critics say that my plan is too big, that it costs $1.9 trillion,” Biden said. “Let me ask them: What would they have me cut?”

Well, since you asked: The measure included raising the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour by the fifth year of raises, but must be approved by the Senate, and is in question. This increase will result in reduced hours, job cuts, or price increases, or a combination of those, as employers struggle to offset the increased expenses.

One feature would provide an additional $135 million in funding to the National Endowment for the Arts, on top of the $167.5 million already budgeted for this year.

Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said recently that he’s “not comfortable” with “embarrassing” spending unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic. He told CNN of his misgivings on $1.5 million for the Seaway International Bridge between Massena, New York, and Canada, and also $100 million for an underground rail line linking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco district and Silicon Valley.

There is $350 billion in aid to state and local governments, which is thought to be “bailouts” of poorly run Democrat areas like New York City and the state of New York. California, which recently reported a $10 billion budget surplus, is expected to receive more than $40 billion from the bill. Some folks think California doesn’t need it. The bill rewards poor stewardship of cities and states and is wasteful.

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 95 percent of the bill’s $129 billion for K-12 schools won’t be spent until 2022-2028. That’s because much of the already appropriated $113 billion hasn’t yet been spent. Why not wait and see if all or any of the $129 billion is needed?

Freshman Congresswoman Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., said in a tweet that, “Less than 1 percent of the COVID relief bill will actually go to vaccine development and distribution. When a top priority accounts for such a small part of the overall spending, it just shows how massive (and unnecessarily bloated) this spending bill is.” 

While the Democrat-controlled Congress is busy spending our tax money on frivolous things under the guise of pandemic relief, the attack on our individual freedoms continues unabated.

One of our freedoms that has been under assault for some time is the ability of business owners to control who they do business with.

When the seasoned citizens among us were young, it was common to see signs on the front door of businesses that said, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason,” or similar language. These days, the government of our free country will punish you and try to force you to do things that are not just things you don’t want to do, but things that are against your religious or personal beliefs.

No doubt more recent such signs saying “No shirt, no shoes, no service” will likewise be deemed illegal by the control-happy government that that thinks it knows best about far too many things.

A long-standing issue holds that while you may be opposed to abortion for religious or other reasons, if you have a business, you may be forced to provide insurance coverage that pays for abortion.

If you are a service provider — such as a baker, photographer or florist — you may be sued or otherwise punished for refusing service for same-sex marriages, regardless of your beliefs or personal feelings.

More recently is the issue of trans-gender women being allowed in women’s restrooms, locker rooms and showers, and participating in women’s sports.

And the State University of New York (SUNY) Geneseo has suspended a male student from his field teaching programs after he was found supporting conservative ideas, such as, “A man is a man, and a woman is a woman.” 

It is reported that two California Democrats, Representatives Anna Eshoo and Jerry McNerney, are pressuring cable companies to drop Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, or pay lower carriage rates in order to shut these networks down. The opposition must be silenced!

It is things like this that cement as reality the idea that our elected representatives have not read, do not understand, or don’t like the rather plain English of the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

Why, in the United States of America, the land of the free, is it sensible or permissable to say that being for something like same-sex marriage, trans-genderism or abortion is okay, but being opposed to one or more of them is wrong? 

We are guaranteed the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Does that not include making up our own minds about social and political issues?

Government excess; correcting a wrong; and foolish leadership

Published December 29, 2020

Congress officially passed a $900 billion coronavirus relief package which was attached to a broader, $1.4 trillion government spending bill, clearing the House and Senate by overwhelming majorities. 

This bill is a monstrosity, running 5,593 pages long, but is perhaps the best of the many Congressional boondoggles with which to illustrate the current practice of bundling a ridiculous range of interests into one omnibus bill.

This tactic most often is used to get one or more highly controversial elements approved with relative ease. You want your favorite pork measure to get approval? Then tie it to a bill that 95 percent of Americans and their elected representatives believe “must” be approved.

Much of government over-spending and outrageous legislative measures have been born of this underhanded, but too-often successful tactic.

The “billionibus” bill has been inaptly referred to as a coronavirus relief measure. While it does fund coronavirus relief and some very beneficial things, it has a lot of money in it for other countries. 

For example, at least $15,000,000 for democracy programs and not less than $10,000,000 for gender programs, in Pakistan; $86 million for assistance to Cambodia; $130 million to Nepal, $1.3 billion for Egypt and their military; $135 million to Burma; $453 million to Ukraine; $700 million to Sudan; and $505 million to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama.

It also gives $40 million for the necessary expenses for the operation, maintenance and security of The Kennedy Center (which has been closed, due to the coronavirus), and includes funds for the Resource Study of Springfield (Illinois) Race Riot that occurred in 1908. 

A proper House and Senate would write bills that dealt with, ideally, one single issue, or perhaps a couple of closely-related ones, instead of a popular issue with a bunch of self-serving, narrow, partisan, voter-attracting measures attached.

* * *

President Donald Trump pardoned Michael Flynn to end the nightmare against a man who had served his country valiantly for many years in the U.S. Army, retiring at the rank of lieutenant general, and had accepted President-elect Trump's offer for the position of National Security Advisor in 2016 and then briefly served as National Security Advisor.

People opposing the pardon rely on the claim that Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but they fail to consider the sordid circumstances of that plea.

An FBI agent, who worked in the disastrous special counsel investigation into supposed Russian involvement with the Trump campaign and administration headed by Robert Mueller, “told investigators he thought the probe into Gen. Michael Flynn was ‘unclear and disorganized,’ and that the former national security adviser wasn't conspiring with Russia,” National Public Radio reported in September.

William Barnett was interviewed by Justice Department investigators, and his position on the Flynn matter was summarized in a 13-page document.

Later, FBI agents prepared to close the investigation of Flynn, having found no wrongdoing, but former FBI intelligence agent Peter Strzok demanded it be kept open. You may remember that Strzok, and his paramour and fellow FBI employee Lisa Page, were knee-deep in official FBI malfeasance. The lengthy and ridiculously expensive Mueller probe failed to find the much-ballyhooed collusion with Russia.

Desperately trying to get Flynn, in early 2017 FBI agents went to the White House to interview him. According to an article at Townhall.com, their handwritten notes said, "What's our goal? Truth/Admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" 

Ultimately, the FBI successfully blackmailed Flynn into pleading guilty to lying. This they accomplished by causing him to run up legal costs that broke him, forcing him to sell his home, and then they threatened to go after his son.

How many of Flynn’s critics would have done the same as he did to escape being persecuted by the FBI?

* * *

We have seen some pretty out-there things occur recently, but please, don’t make the mistake of thinking that things cannot get any crazier. 

A major American city plans to allow perpetrators of many crimes to have their charges dismissed if poverty, mental illness or substance-abuse disorder is the reason they committed the crimes. This will be classified as a poverty defense, according to the elected officials who champion this idea.

If you are poor and living on the street, and break into a business or a home and steal something, your criminal charge will be dismissed, and you are free to sell the stolen items in order to help you survive.

And, in order to acquire adequate shelter, trespassers will be allowed to set up camp on private property. 

Other wrongdoings on this list of allowable crimes, when committed for the reasons listed, are assault and harassment. 

Want to guess in which U.S. city this is happening? Seattle, Washington. An organization called Decriminalize Seattle is behind this movement. It has also called for defunding police by at least 50 percent, and using those funds for “community led health and safety systems.” 

This is the sort of “leadership” we find today in Democrat-run cities and states. Will a Democrat administration allow this twisted reasoning to be applied nationwide?

Opportunism is alive and thriving among Democrat politicians

“Some things never change” is a comment we hear when something negative occurs, yet again. The onset of the coronavirus has turned the country upside down, put millions in jeopardy of one sort or another, and created a situation where national, state and local officials felt the need to enforce behavioral restrictions on citizens.

With that tumult, perhaps that phrase was brought to mind from the fact Congressional Democrats remain undeterred by the pandemic, and are dutifully pursuing their regressive goal of “progressivism.”

Senate Democrats on Thursday stalled the passage of a $250 billion relief package designed to aid small businesses. Trying to speed up the passage of the needed funding, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-KY, called for a vote by unanimous consent.

But rather than pass a measure nearly all senators supported, Democrats requested protections for minority-owned businesses and additional aid to local health care providers, blocking the measure that was intended as an addition to the $350 billion Paycheck Protection Program, which gives forgivable loans to small businesses.

McConnell had said to the Senate Thursday morning, “Do not block emergency aid you do not oppose just because you want something more.” His words fell on deaf ears.

Following the failed vote, McConnell said he did not oppose the Democrats’ requests on principle, but that the Paycheck Protection Program needed urgent relief.

This effort to foul up the legislative process was not the first time Democrats had tried to force unrelated measures into a time-sensitive coronavirus support bill.

On Sunday, March 22, as the bipartisan agreement between the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate reached over the weekend was about to come to a vote, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, showed up with a wish list of “progressive” goodies, among which were:

1. Union Giveaways:

• Nullifies the White House executive orders on federal collective bargaining and codifies taxpayer-funded union official time.

• Requires a labor union representative on every airline’s board of directors.

• Multiemployer pension bailout lacking needed reforms.

• Permanently raises the minimum wage to $15 for any business that receives federal aid for COVID-19.

• Cancels all debt owed by the U.S. Postal Service to the Treasury.

2. Green New Deal priorities:

• Requires all airlines that receive assistance to offset carbon emissions for domestic flights by 2025.

• Includes a $1 billion “cash for clunkers” airplane program where the Transportation Department buys fuel-inefficient planes from airlines in exchange for agreeing to buy new ones.

• Includes expansive new tax-credit for solar and wind energy.

3. Student Loan Forgiveness:

• $10,000 blanket loan forgiveness.

4. Federalizing Elections:

• Mandates how states must run elections, including the nationalization of ballot harvesting, requiring early voting, same day registration, and no-excuse vote by mail.

• Puts states at risk of costly litigation if they are unable to implement these stringent mandates ahead of the 2020 election.

Fearing they might again lose an election to Donald Trump, presented with the opportunity provided by the coronavirus crisis, and bringing back the elements that didn’t get through in the stimulus bill to change the existing election process, House Democrats have created a measure mis-labeled as the “Take Responsibility Act.”

This recipe for Democrat victory calls for legislative changes to remove the ability of states to manage the “Times, Places, and Manner” of elections as called for in the Constitution’s Article I provisions.

Changes include:

• states must allow 15 consecutive days of early voting

• makes absentee voting universal

• prohibits “requiring identification to obtain an absentee ballot”

• allows “another person” to drop off absentee ballots and removes limits on how many can be delivered by one person

• ensures provisional ballots are always counted (rendering them no longer “provisional”) and provides “blank” (no printed name) absentee ballots to citizens and service members overseas 

Anyone see opportunities for fraud here?

In signing gun control bills into law last week, Virginia’s Democrat Governor Ralph Northam said, “We lose too many Virginians to gun violence.” Notice he didn’t say we lose too many Virginians to “guns,” he said, we lose too many Virginians to gun “violence.”

It is violence that costs too many Virginians their lives, so instead of laws against guns, why doesn’t the General Assembly pass, and the governor sign, laws against violence?

Oh, that’s right. We already have laws against violence, but those laws don’t encroach on citizens’ Second Amendment rights. But the new laws do. And anything Virginia Democrats can do to interfere with the Constitutionally protected right to keep and bear arms, they will do.

And to make the fairy tale complete, still seeking the dreamt of, and so-far elusive coup de grace: yet another investigation into Trump.

Pelosi made it official last week: House Democrats are opening yet another inquisition against Trump. The last dismal failure actually did accomplish something, however. It distracted the Congress and administration from the developing crisis of the Wuhan virus, which they then could — and did — twist into the charge that Trump did not act swiftly enough to protect the country, and now by golly, that needs to be investigated.

You have to admire the Democrats’ devotion to bring Trump down, so strong as to eclipse any other consideration, like the welfare of the country and their constituents.