…Back to Leo.
Making laws is messy and sometimes those involved feel the need for secrecy, or at least the ability to do things outside of the public light.
Last year, a memo from the Senate Finance Committee asked for Senators’ ideas on how to reform the tax code. And in return for suggestions would keep the identity of the senator who submitted proposals a secret for fifty years.
Presumably the proposals would get written into a bill and then Senators would then vote on the whole package not necessarily knowing who suggested which idea. Under this plan Senator would be able to submit a proposal knowing it is good and represents his or her state and not be attacked for it by the most vocal, most partisan elements that could serve a primary challenge.
Could this happen if all the lawmakers were “transparent”? Only if those Senators writing proposals could keep the cameras from looking at computer monitors, and everybody reading could keep cameras off the documents.
The fifty-year rule should not be necessary for Senators to submit their legislative ideas, but if that is what it takes in the current environment when everybody talks, imagine what it would take when there are constant first-hand live (and archived) feeds of the entire lawmaking and sausage making process? I think it would take more than fifty years of anonymity for a lawmaker to come out with a bold proposal at odds with his or her party.
This is the first in a series of (probably) non-sequential posts I will be writing on ‘The Circle’