> Only if those bold reforms weren't in the interests of the people they serve.
This is my point exactly: the creative process is impossible to do perfectly. If you want to find potential policies to enact, you need to examine very many policies that don’t work and aren’t in your constituents best interest. Those get left on the table and not advanced to actual congressional actions, sparing the legislator scrutiny for their creativity.
Some creative solution-seeking will happen in a bipartisan way through negotiation. I understand the desire to see the whole process, but removing the veil would change the behavior the participants. If every word were subject to partisan scrutiny from the wings, how could congresspeople possibly get anything productive done? See as evidence congressional committee hearings, in which the members spend significant time grandstanding for C-SPAN sound bites instead of productive questioning.
> When their behavior is conducted in secrecy behind closed doors the public doesn't have the ability to hold them accountable for it
This is obviously not true. Every bill has publicly documented sponsors and goes through a lengthy, public process with several rounds of procedural votes, committee approvals, amendment debates, etc. At some point there must be a minimum granularity of attribution. Track Changes from blank page to finished law would be useless anyway, because it would show some unpaid staffer actually typed most of the changes. Even Git history uses commits, and very mature projects like the Linux kernel revise their patches rather than keeping a detailed history of the patch creation. The champion who landed it and their reviewers are credited with the patch, as also in Congress.
> Often most of that work is done entirely for them by corporations and lobbying groups
The drafting and ideation? Sure! I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s much better that we have an entire industry of people studying the law, finding solutions, and advocating their preferred options, rather than a group of Philosopher Kings making the law in isolation. You’re also dramatically downplaying the effort of coalition building, balancing constituent pressure, and passing procedural hurdles that is required to take a bill all the way from draft to law.
I think we may agree that provenance of bill text originating from outside of Congress could potentially be more transparent. But then again, the relevant interest groups are usually very well known by the time a bill reaches the floor anyway because that is their whole purpose, and they want to take credit for their victories. And “Monsanto drafted these provisions” is pretty far from the vision of absolute transparency and zero congressional privacy that you seem to be suggesting.
Do you have other specific ideas to increase transparency? If bill sponsor attribution, public debate and amendment, and recorded voting record are insufficient to understand a legislator’s actions, what would you suggest instead?
This is my point exactly: the creative process is impossible to do perfectly. If you want to find potential policies to enact, you need to examine very many policies that don’t work and aren’t in your constituents best interest. Those get left on the table and not advanced to actual congressional actions, sparing the legislator scrutiny for their creativity.
Some creative solution-seeking will happen in a bipartisan way through negotiation. I understand the desire to see the whole process, but removing the veil would change the behavior the participants. If every word were subject to partisan scrutiny from the wings, how could congresspeople possibly get anything productive done? See as evidence congressional committee hearings, in which the members spend significant time grandstanding for C-SPAN sound bites instead of productive questioning.
> When their behavior is conducted in secrecy behind closed doors the public doesn't have the ability to hold them accountable for it
This is obviously not true. Every bill has publicly documented sponsors and goes through a lengthy, public process with several rounds of procedural votes, committee approvals, amendment debates, etc. At some point there must be a minimum granularity of attribution. Track Changes from blank page to finished law would be useless anyway, because it would show some unpaid staffer actually typed most of the changes. Even Git history uses commits, and very mature projects like the Linux kernel revise their patches rather than keeping a detailed history of the patch creation. The champion who landed it and their reviewers are credited with the patch, as also in Congress.
> Often most of that work is done entirely for them by corporations and lobbying groups
The drafting and ideation? Sure! I wouldn’t want it any other way. It’s much better that we have an entire industry of people studying the law, finding solutions, and advocating their preferred options, rather than a group of Philosopher Kings making the law in isolation. You’re also dramatically downplaying the effort of coalition building, balancing constituent pressure, and passing procedural hurdles that is required to take a bill all the way from draft to law.
I think we may agree that provenance of bill text originating from outside of Congress could potentially be more transparent. But then again, the relevant interest groups are usually very well known by the time a bill reaches the floor anyway because that is their whole purpose, and they want to take credit for their victories. And “Monsanto drafted these provisions” is pretty far from the vision of absolute transparency and zero congressional privacy that you seem to be suggesting.
Do you have other specific ideas to increase transparency? If bill sponsor attribution, public debate and amendment, and recorded voting record are insufficient to understand a legislator’s actions, what would you suggest instead?