Does Anyone Pay Attention to the Contents of Proposed Legislation Anymore?

Once upon a time, I wished that a balanced budget amendment would include a provision reading:

Congress shall make no law which embraces more than one subject, that subject to be expressed in the title. All acts which repeal, revive or amend former laws, shall recite in their caption, or otherwise, the title or substance of the law repealed, revived or amended.

In fairness, I should note that the text actually is borrowed from the Tennessee state constitution, where framers were concerned about the shenanigans that can occur when legislators start hiding things in bills.

For example, consider this article on a draft climate-change bill, published by the Washington Post:

The running joke in Washington is that nobody has read the 900-plus-page energy bill sponsored by Reps. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) and Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), which the House will consider in coming weeks. What you hear from its backers is that its cap-and-trade provisions would create a market-based program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — which should mean that a simple, systemwide incentive encourages polluters to make the easiest reductions in greenhouse gases first, keeping the costs of fighting global warming to a minimum. In fact, the bill also contains regulations on everything from light bulb standards to the specs on hot tubs, and it will reshape America’s economy in dozens of ways that many don’t realize.

Here is just one: The bill would give the federal government power over local building codes. It requires that by 2012 codes must require that new buildings be 30 percent more efficient than they would have been under current regulations. By 2016, that figure rises to 50 percent, with increases scheduled for years after that. With those targets in mind, the bill expects organizations that develop model codes for states and localities to fill in the details, creating a national code. If they don’t, the bill commands the Energy Department to draft a national code itself.

I could agree that more could be done in the nation’s building codes to promote conservation and energy efficiency.  A little goading isn’t a bad thing.

However, surely I’m not the only person who gets concerned about concentrating power in Washington, regardless of which party holds the reins.

And because it’s a passage buried in a bigger bill, there probably won’t be that much public debate on the subject.

It also makes you wonder what else is hidden in the 900 pages of legalese.