[gozur88]

Sunsets don't have any effect in practice. All sorts of US laws have sunset provisions, and unless they've become somehow politically contentious they get renewed without debate every year.

[panic]

At least the legislature has to spend some time renewing them. Everyone bears the cost of having to know and follow all the laws; lawmakers having to spend the time to renew every law would be a better alignment of incentives.

[gozur88]

Except that it's all rolled into one bill. Which they haven't read (they don't actually read any of the bills).

If they spend more than about ten minutes on the whole exercise I'd be shocked.

[panic]

Yeah, you'd have to combine it with a length limit on the text of bills.

[drdeca]

Require that one of the people voting reads the entirety of the bill aloud in front of the whole group before 'yes' votes are valid?

Doesn't make the length boundary sharp, but still provides a limit of sorts.

Less restrictive than the one in Gulliver's Travels!

edit: whoops someone already said this

[drchaos]

> they get renewed without debate every year

That should simply not be allowed. It's the legislative equivalent of handing out an inspection sticker without actually inspecting the car.

[nathan_long]

Yep. Idea: congress shouldn't be able to pass a law without reading every word of it aloud. If you weren't there to listen, you can't vote.