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Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

This tactic of bundling feel-good legislation ("free puppies for orphans act") with bad legislation ("extend copyright for a billion more years rider") is so lame. I wonder if there could be a constitutional amendment that required separation of concerns with new legislation. As in, if a vote is primarily about, say, healthcare, but someone throws in a rider to build a new bridge to nowhere in their state, the entire thing could be challenged in court.

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During the US Civil War, the Confederate States Constitution had a section like that, to limit bills to only contain one subject. Article I, Section 9(20):

> Every law or resolution having the force of law, shall relate to but one subject, and that shall be expressed in the title.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederat...

Something like this could work well with a more dirdct democracy approach.

See Downsize DC's One Subject at a Time Act (OSTA) which does exactly what you ask[0]. I have heard that what the bill wants to accomplish would require a constitutional amendment, as you suggested, due to legislative entrenchment (the current congress cannot bind a future congress) but I do not know what the truth of the situation is.

Downsize DC's Agenda page has a list of all of their bills[1]. OSTA is the one I think has the best chance of being implemented. Some others with good ideas include:

* Read The Bills Act: 'Yea' votes require that the congressperson has read/heard the bill (no more "I didn't know that was in there!"), mandatory 7-day public review period of final bill text. I think the mandatory reading of the text before a quorum will keep this one from being considered though.

* Enumerated Powers Act: Congress must cite the constitutional authority on which the bill rests.

I don't view Downsize DC as a very effective organization, so I would love to see other orgs throw their weight behind OSTA. It seems to me that it's something EFF or ACLU could support, for example, because so many of the things they fight against were enacted using sneaky riders.

[0]https://downsizedc.org/etp/one-subject/ [1]https://downsizedc.org/agenda

(Theoretically, at least) The ability to exercise a line-item veto would help. The rider to build an new bridge to nowhere would get vetoed, and the rest of the bill would go through.

It would help in that way, but it could hurt in that a popular bill could be neutered at the desk to remove its teeth or any essential protections.

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