by Dennis Aubuchon

Created on: January 21, 2007   Last Updated: April 19, 2007

Integrity in the political process is something that needs to be increased. Legislation proposed at the national level needs to meet certain criteria if the legislation is going to be a valuable addition to current laws. Today there is much news about legislation that keeps being added to other bills being processed that are an effort to get legislation for a specific community or state. While this is not necessarily a bad situation, the value of the legislation needs to be examined. These criteria would help to eliminate or reduce wasteful spending and may help to reduce the national debt. Remaining legislation proposed at the national level also needs to be evaluated based on value added conditions and/or whether the requirement is the responsibility of the federal government to provide.

Proposed legislation at the national level should also not be bogged down with devoting time to legislation for old or new programs that add no value. Some examples of programs that are warranted would be to provide funding for items such as Medicare, highway construction and repair, and others that provide funding for mandated federal program requirements. The role of the federal government, in my opinion, is to provide laws and funding where necessary that bring consistency to requirements for all citizens and to support mandated federal programs.
Sometimes states impose requirements differently for various subjects. While this is not necessarily bad, there needs to be some consistency for requirements that apply to all citizens regardless of state of residence. In this situation, the federal government should identify minimum requirements. Many pieces of legislation are meant to give local representatives or senators exposure for doing something for their home district or state. While it is important to the individual (s) involved showing some action, proposing legislation that is not beneficial to the local, state or national level only adds to waste of taxpayer dollars. Spending time on processing legislation that serves no useful purpose is not in the best interest of the community, state or national level. The list of items in the next paragraph are some of the criteria which I feel all proposed national legislation should meet.
The first item is that funding for value added mandated government programs should be provided. A second condition is to renew funding for programs that work and has shown positive results. This is important as we need to keep renew funding

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