Congress spends a lot of time passing new bills, but how often and how much time do they spend looking back at the effect of these new laws? How often are bad bills repealed (or those that we have not been able to implement effectively)? I think doing so would be an extremely good use of their time.
It’s the equivalent of reviewing your credit card statement at the end of the month. When I do this, my thoughts usually include:
- How did I spend this much?
- What was that for?
- Why did I buy that? I haven’t even used it.
- That was a smart purchase.
Recently we have heard that the upcoming potential changes to healthcare are so critical because any change will permanently alter the way the healthcare industry works. This means that whatever we end up with has to be the best idea – no second chances.
I contrast this approach with my experiences as an auditor when I was testing a complex account or transaction. I would develop a plan for research, documenting, testing, etc, and then begin. Often, I found the “perfect plan” could not be completed due to complexities that were impossible for me to understand until I was involved in the testing. In other words, designing the perfect plan in advance was impossible.
At least 1/3 of Congressional time needs to be spent analyzing the effectiveness and consequences of new and old laws. This would prevent abuses like the paper company that received over $100M in energy company subsidies because they added some of their waste to their fuel. It would help Congress understand the actual financial costs of their laws, instead of the b.s. projections used when getting it to pass (Medicare costs rise 34% higher than private healthcare costs). It would also create a more fluid government structure where we wouldn’t be so afraid to consider implementing big picture changes (tax reform).
Bottom line – I’ll trust my representatives more if I believe they care about and understand the ACTUAL impact of their bills.
Last 3 posts by Eric B.
- Nassim Taleb on the Economy - June 25th, 2010
- Full Circle - May 3rd, 2010
- The Dark Side :) - April 5th, 2010
I think that is a great idea! Really, I do. I get the feeling that our congressmen feel the need to fill up all their time with creating laws. They want to be busy doing stuff and looking good to their constituents, so we end up with more and more legislation (Again, this is just my general observation. Maybe someone could prove me wrong, but I don’t think so). If we mandated them to spend 33% of their time reviewing their own actions, we would have less legislation being passed in the first place. And the legislation that is passed would be only the absolutely necessary which will be reviewed and evaluated in the future. Excellent idea!