Legislative language

In musing about how Congress should stay on topic I found govtrack.us (which seems to be a very useful site). (No comments on how my first sentence is not related to the rest of my post).

As a result of finding govtrack and the full text of the bill I skimmed through the Credit CARD Act of 2009 and read the section allowing guns in National Parks and National Wildlife Refuges. The thing that struck me was the language used. I did student congress in high school and I know that the law has its own language. But some parts of this section read more like PowerPoint slides than legal language. The sentence that really got me:

Congress needs to weigh in on the new regulations to ensure that unelected bureaucrats and judges cannot again override the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens on 83,600,000 acres of National Park System land and 90,790,000 acres of land under the jurisdiction of the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

Weigh in? Next thing you know Congress is going to leverage the synergy of the new process to produce outstanding results in all that they do.

Why doesn't congress stay on topic?

I've been thinking about this for a long time but the recent passage of the Credit CARD Act of 2009 prompted me to write it down. Would our government be better or worse if members of Congress were compelled to deal with issues one at a time? Or maybe not even that--members of Congress do need to multi-task and deal with many issues in a day. Would public policy/legislation be better if it were always limited to a single topic? We would end up with more bills certainly but would they be better?

Regardless of how one feels about credit card regulation or carrying guns in National Parks these topics are not in any way related. I know that there is a good deal of horse trading that goes on to get legislation passed. And I have heard the old saw about laws being like sausage. But even if the deal making includes unrelated topics it seems like the legislation itself should be on a single or closely related set of topics. Maybe there are big advantages to doing it this way that I just don't see but it seems ludicrous that such muddled thinking and writing are the norm and that everyone accepts it.

competition for government contracts

Competition for services is different that competition for goods
After hearing about that no government contract should be awarded sole source and that no contract should be cost-plus I have been thinking about what that might look like. The problem is competition for government contracts is not like competition in a normal marketplace. Most contracts aren't for widgets that are being built and the government is trying to buy a few--it is for a service. So it should be thought of more like hiring a home contractor or a doctor. Have you ever tried to get a fixed price contract with your doctor? Do you shop for a different doctor every time you feel sick?

I am not saying that all contracts should be sole source or that fixed price contracts are bad. I do find the lack of depth in the public conversation to be frustrating.

White House Communications Feedback

Mark Leibovich writes in the New York Times Magazine, 'The podium job [of White House Press Secretary] is all-consuming, especially in an age when daily briefings are televised. As Axelrod says, “You can send markets crashing and troops in motion by one slip of the tongue.”'

Isn't this a sign that we have our feedback loop out of whack? If we engineered a car such that operating the turn signal incorrectly caused the freeway to back up wouldn't that be a problem?

link to Put Change.gov under Revision Control

A concrete suggestion from Tim O'Reilly for improving transparency in government.