The recent controversy over the Earmark added to the Highway Corrections Bill (H.R. 1195) shows the urgent need for more tranparency in the lawmaking process.  Earmarks in general are bad enough, but this controversy is about more than money - the text of a law was CHANGED between the time Congress passed it and the President signed it into law.  This means that we now have  a law on the books that was never voted on by Congress!

This is being investigated from the point of view that the earmark funds will benefit a contributor to the local Congressman involved, which of course does need to be dealt with. However, the news reports I have seen don’t seem to be concerned with how the bill got changed AT ALL between Congress and the White House.  What’s next - a bill that passes Congress with the phrase “Waterboarding shall be considered torture” gets signed into law as “Waterboarding shall not be considered torture”?

Suggestion for a simple correction by Congress:

“The Highway Corrections Bill, H.R. 1195, is hereby repealed in its entirety as the bill as signed by the President was not what was passed by Congress.”

Publishing the full text of each and every bill for 48 hours before it can be voted on would make this kind of deceit much more difficult to even attempt. I wonder how many times this has been gotten away with that we don’t even know about?

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 4:24 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.