Jason Kuznicki, and his colleagues Tim Sandefur, Jonathan Rowe, and Ed Brayton, run a highly informative blog at www.PostiveLiberty.com. We’ll be linking to it often and we encourage you to check it out.
We’d like to thank Jason for his recent favorable mention of Downsize DC and the Read the Bills Act (RTBA).
Jason refers to RTBA as an “impossible project.” Is it? Almost certainly, if we only take into account what the politicians would be willing to do voluntarily, if left to their own devices. But the aim is to not leave them to their own devices. The aim is to overwhelm them with faxes, emails, phone calls, personal visits, advertisements, and media questions, all of which urge them to sponsor and pass RTBA. Is this impossible?
It seems reasonable to assume that a large number of Americans would support something like RTBA, and perhaps even our highly enforceable version of the idea. It also seems reasonable to assume that it would be possible to overwhelm Congress using the methods described above. After all, there are millions of Americans, and only 535 people in Congress. What remains to be seen is how many people can be recruited to do this overwhelming, how many people it will take to exert the required pressure, how much pressure will actually be needed, and how long it will take to recruit and apply the necessary forces. But nothing in this set of tasks seems inherently impossible.
One thing is certain, favorable mentions like Jason Kuznicki’s speed-the-day when we can have answers to all of these questions. The more people who know about RTBA, the more likely it is that we can compel Congress to pass it. Thank you Jason!