Get Off My Back
 

What do you do with a bill that is unpopular, not in the best interest of the majority of the people and could never muster enough support for it to pass? Simple. Tack it on the back of a popular bill as a "rider".

If a bill is so unpopular that it has to be carried along as a rider, it is a bad bill and should never be passed. Riders can eliminate discussion, committees and debate.

This is one of those loopholes discovered by people who want to hide something or push it down people's throat with a "taking the bad with the good" mentality.

Lobbyists are good ones for proposing things that benefit a single minority group, such as oil barons or pharmaceutical houses. Politicians find it a good way to pay back favors and large campaign contributions. What it amounts to is sneaky politics.

The federal government needs to adopt the same measure that most state legislatures have for passing bills, SSDT, or single subject, descriptive title. It's a simple sensible method. If a bill is proposed that will result in clean air, it's called the Clean Air Bill. Everybody in Congress discusses it and then they vote on it. Period. Nothing else gets stuck on it. If you want to write to your representatives to support it you don't have to look up numbers and tell them to support HR-12345. You want them to support clean air, you tell them to support the Clean Air Bill. If you want to see how they voted on it, you look under Clean Air Bill.

Anyone who would want open and honest government should support this kind of measure. The only ones who would oppose it must still want to sneak their self-serving legislation onto the back of a popular bill. Those are the ones who need to be voted out of office. The people need to take back the country and demand honest representation. Our representatives pass bills that affect our lives. Why would anyone want to trust their lives to someone who isn't honest? You wouldn't go to a doctor you didn't trust.

Americans have got to get over their complacency about their government. We give our representatives the power to make decisions that will affect us, our children and our children's children for generations. We have to start taking an interest in what they're doing. We can't just accept what they tell us in campaign promises. We take more interest when we buy a toaster. We'll check price, performance and guarantee before we spend the twenty dollars to buy it. Can't we at least show as much concern over the people who hold our freedoms in their hands?

12-03-03