[stavrianos]

It would absolutely be realistic if the legislation were of a sane length. If a bill can't be read and understood within an hour, it's probably too big for anyone to properly understand it at all, and it should be disallowed on principle.

[tptacek]

This all seems to devolve to libertarianism --- "the bills are complicated because regulation is complicated", "no, regulation is only complicated because we over-regulate", and on and on until we hit the point where we say the free market will take care of PCBs in the watershed.

I'm fine with the fact that Dick Durbin isn't doing line-by-line review of the health care reform bill, and with the idea that one party is lining up behind one set of experts and interests, and the other is lining up behind another one. Dick Durbin would do a crappy job of making good judgements about health care. Replace him with someone who's awesome at health care, and now you have someone who does a crappy job with defense contracts.

[stavrianos]

Either bills don't matter, in which case voting on them without knowing what they say is fine (but why are we wasting our time on it?), or they do matter, in which case they should be read and understood.

Is there more to it than that? Maybe a continuum of importance, where some proportion of the voters has to know some proportion of what the bill means. Then the rest can use a combination of guesswork and party line to make their decision... ? Oh wait.

It's a robust system! really!

[DanielStraight]

Libertarianism is devolving? I beg to differ.

[gojomo]

The complexity is a shield against accountability.

[DanielStraight]

I agree, except instead of one hour, one minute.