The Brevity Act

Bob Gale at Big Hollywood thinks it's time for new constitutional amendment and I couldn't agree more:

Earlier this year, Congress passed a “Stimulus” Bill. It was 973 pages long. This past Friday, the House passed a “Climate Change” Bill. It was more than 1200 pages long.

This got me wondering: how long, exactly, is our Constitution? How many pages did it take our country’s founders to lay out the structure and functions of our Federal Government?

Easy to answer. I found the Constitution online and copied it into a Word document, in Times New Roman 12 point type. So how long is it?

Including the preamble, all signatures and all 27 amendments, it’s 20 pages.

Without the signatures and amendments, it’s 11 pages.

Think about that. The entire foundation of our country - the complete design for our entire government — is clearly explained in only 11 pages.

No single Amendment is a full page. Many are only a single sentence.

Yet the bill that was passed on June 26, 2009 by 219 of our elected representatives — people to whom we’ve entrusted our Constitution, men and women who have sworn an oath to uphold it - was more than 1200 pages long. That’s over 100 times longer than the U.S. Constitution! And not one member of Congress, NOT ONE, read the whole thing!

A word comes to my mind to describe this: “INSANE.”

I cannot believe that this type of legislation and legislative behavior is what the signers of our Constitution intended when they invented Congress.

Therefore, I am respectfully proposing a 28th Amendment to our Constitution. I call it the Brevity Act.

No law, bill, resolution or any act of Congress shall exceed 2000 words, including all footnotes, amendments and signatures. Congress shall not vote on any item longer than that. Each item requiring a vote shall be read aloud in its entirety in session to a majority of members. Those not in attendance may not vote on the item.

2000 words is about 5 single spaced pages in a 12 point Word document. If it’s longer than that, then it’s too complicated to be a single law or bill, so it must either be cut or turned into multiple bills, each requiring a separate vote.

Furthermore, a Brevity Act should be part of every State Constitution, County Charter and City Charter.

To those who would oppose this Act because it would require Legislatures to vote separately on every single item in the budget, I say, it’s about time!

It should be a Federal crime for any Representative or Senator to vote on a bill he or she hasn't read. And I'd take it one step further - before they can vote they have to pass a 10 question quiz demonstrating they not only read the bill but understand what they read.

That would really slow things down in Congress, and perhaps we could start expecting intelligent voting from our elected representatives.