I don't understand why earmarks are allowed on congressional bills

The only way to pass their stupid appropriations

They should be illegal

nm

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If earmarks are allowed, why isn't line item veto allowed?

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There you go again Springer, using common sense and DC in the same collective thought.....

Whats theirs is theirs and whats yours is theirs, capish?

a bill should be for one specific item or subject and should be less than a half page and in layman's terms.

Well then we wouldn't need lawyers. What would the poor lawyers do then?

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What would the poor lawyers do then?

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Fix toilets? Dig ditches?

Lobbying should be heavily curtailed, and any politician deemed to be abusing tax payer dollars should be put to death.

I have long advocated for a requriement to submit only straightforward bills for enactment into law.

Too much of the bullshite we have to deal with is a result of this dark-of-the-night shoo horn amendments - aka 'earmarks'

If you want something enacted, write a bill about THAT item and describe it fully and debate it openly and thoroughly - and then stand by it.

and for damned sure = nothing with an "EMERGENCY" tag should ever be considered without direct attribution as to its effect in mitigating the emergency/

That bridge to nowhere ain't building itself

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If you limited legislation the way you describe, you would create an exponential increase in ambiguity and thus in litigation.

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the only exception I can take on the

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a bill should be for one specific item or subject and should be less than a half page and in layman's terms.

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is the use of 'layman's terms.'

I do feel that any legislation should be narrowly molded to a specific purpose and that it takes 'lawyerly' verbiage to fully describe the 'four corners' of its scope.

But the sentiment of the thread is valid - no more of this shoe-horning of unrelated garbage into a bill - regardless of how well 'lawyered up' it is.

And I wold love to see 100 different half page bills -> each addressing a specific topic - instead of 1000 page beheomaths that cover 100 (plus x number of addons) written with the intent of actually hiding the specifics of the content to anyone other than a lawyer.

And yes - every piece of legislation should be accompanied by a peer-review plain-english 'layman's' description of its contents.