Jim Bunning’s Good Idea: 72 Hour Transparency Act for Bills
Senator Jim Bunning is not known for supporting government transparency and accountability. Failing to support government openness about its surveillance activities, Bunning regularly votes instead in favor of government-supported discrimination.
But this week Senator Bunning has come out with a good idea that has the potential to enhance citizens’ awareness of what’s going on in their government. S. 1772 is a bill that would require the text of legislation to be publicly available for 72 hours before it is acted upon. This would provide a three day period in which citizens could read and react to all proposals. No longer could controversial provisions be sneaked into bills before the public had a chance to know.
Transparency isn’t helpful to ordinary citizens alone. Inside the Senate itself, the practice of pushing through legislative changes too quickly for rank-and-file Senators to reasonably react would also be brought to an end by this bill. S. 1772 would thereby democratize the Senate, preventing episodes of public embarrassment like that endured yesterday by Senator Amy Klobuchar. Klobuchar chirpily assured her colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee that they didn’t need to pass the Durbin Amendment to S. 1692 because reasonable text was already in that bill. Then Klobuchar picked up the Durbin Amendment, read the text of it, praised it, and reiterated that she would vote against it. How could Senator Klobuchar be so unfamiliar with the Durbin Amendment that she opposed? A lack of diligence on her part explains some of the problem, but there’s a structural source of her ignorance as well: Amy Klobuchar didn’t have three days to review the Amendment and get it straight in her head.
Senator Bunning inserts reasonable caveats into his legislation: in the case of true emergencies, a 2/3 vote of the Senate or committee considering legislation can waive the 72 hour requirement. No classified information contained in bills will have to be made public, either. For the vast majority of legislation that doesn’t deal with classified material and isn’t passed on a true emergency basis, Bunning’s bill reasonably requires that the public have a chance to see what’s headed down its throat.
Thanks are due to Senator Jim Bunning for taking the public’s blindfold off. It’s perhaps ironic that the full text of S. 1772 isn’t yet available for the public to read via the official Congressional database called Thomas. Fortunately, Jim Bunning has made the full text available here.
Update: Not a soul has cosponsored Senator Bunning’s bill.