Today’s Downsizer-Dispatch . . .
Please forward to interested friends . . .
We need more pressure on Congress to pass the “Read the Bills Act” (RTBA). Today is the day to increase that pressure. If you’ve already asked Congress to pass RTBA, do it again by clicking here.
If you’ve not yet contacted Congress about RTBA, please do so now. It only takes two minutes. Click here.
RTBA would slow the cancerous growth of government by requiring a quorum of Congress to hear a reading of every word of every bill before a vote is held.
RTBA would require the same level of responsibility that accountants and attorneys have when they represent you. Any Representative or Senator who will vote yes on a bill must sign a sworn affidavit, under penalty of perjury, that he or she has read every word of the bill they intend to pass.
RTBA would motivate Congress to make bills shorter and simpler, so they could tolerate reading them. This would reduce the practice of passing bad measures by combining them with good ones.
RTBA would require the posting of the final text of a bill on the Internet for 7 days before a vote can be held. This would end the secret insertion of secret provisions into bills at the last minute. This would help control earmarks (pork barrel spending).
No exception is made for emergencies, because Congress would make everything an emergency. Neither the response to Pearl Harbor nor 9-11 would have been hampered by the 7-day waiting period. The President already has executive power for the immediate response to emergencies.
Ignorance of the law is no excuse for you. Neither should it be for lawmakers.
We have so far bombarded Congress with 36,090 messages requesting the passage of RTBA. This pressure has resulted in the introduction of two weak copycat bills that would do nothing to end Congress’s practice of passing legislation it has not read. We need to increase the pressure to pass a real “Read the Bills Act.”
Let’s push the number of messages past 40,000 today. It takes just two minutes to send a message that will go to both your Senators and your Representative. You can do so by clicking here.
You have a right to petition Congress for a redress of grievances. Use your rights or lose them. You can send your message in support of the “Read the Bills Act” by clicking here.
Thank you for participating.
Jim Babka
President
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
PS: You can read the full two-page text of RTBA here.