Should all pending federal legislation be posted online for a minimum of 72 hours before voting can take place?

No

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by Rick Badman

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There are many reasons why I don't believe all pending legislation should be posted on the Internet at least 72 hours before a vote. For one thing, throughout history, many decisions were made that initially were unpopular. When Jefferson had the Louisiana Purchase become a part of the United States, how many people would have approved of the sale? The same can apply to the purchase of Alaska from the Russians. What if it had gone to Canada? All the gold and oil discovered there would have benefitted Canadians and the Ottowa government.

Going to war is something that should never be taken lightly. If the people had opposed our entry into Korea to fight against the communists, the peninsula might be communist today and Japan would be threatened. Maybe if the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution had been argued by the public for 72 hours, we might have had over 50,000 American lives spared that died in Vietnam.

At times the public supports things that it shouldn't support. We have a republic and not a democracy. That means we rely on the "wisdom" of elected officials to make decisions instead of have the people decide. With the public being constantly swayed one way or another, there's no telling how this nation might have been.

Let's say scientists claim that global warming is going to destroy the world and immediate action must be done to prevent it. But they don't tell the public that it will cost them over $5 trillion and drastically lower our standard of living. If the Congress were voting against a global warming bill because enough logical people realized that there is conflicting data, if the public was dead-set against such a bill, the Congress might pas the bill and cost the people over $5 trillion. If it is found out a few years later that global cooling is happening, that will be $5 trillion wasted to try and prevent a non-problem.

It would be nice to know what is coming up for a vote in order to voice an opinion. That is one of the reasons why various issues are discussed on the Internet. People in Washington are at times flooded with messages over the phone or over the Internet to try and persuade them to vote one way or another. So often a 72-hour "heads up" is not needed. And with talk radio stirring emotions, sometimes a sure vote for something becomes a sure vote against it within 72 hours.

Sometimes information can be confusing. The way something is worded can be deceiving. If I supported pornography in the schools, I could always call a bill the Safe Sexual Education Awareness Act and hide behind the First Amendment to allow pornography to be distributed in the schools to impressionable young minds. If the Democratic Republic of Korea is actually North Korea and it is anything but democratic, deceptive labeling of bills can allow bad decisions to be made.

Many people want to have Congress do for them what they can't do for themselves like provide them with nearly everything they need. They go from being adults to helpless children. If they see Congress trying to do a lot of things, some good and some bad, the bad might outweigh the benefits of the good. Do you think people would have appreciated government run health care if they had pushed for it in 1993 and the waiting times and refusual to care for many due to costs had made our health care system worst? Also, if a lot of things need to be done in a hurry like hurricane relief, 72 hours may be too long a waiting time. So keep the system the way it is unless the government is able to do too many things the people would oppose if they knew about them first.

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