Little-Acorn
Gold Member
I've been wondering what we could do to cut down on the staggeringly huge accumulation of laws we have in this country. Some are exceedingly trivial, others have unintended consequences, and others are pretty unpopular, but laws almost never get repealed.
What if we had an unrepealable law (Constitutional amendment maybe? Those are VERY seldom repealed, and it takes a huge effort) that said that:
1.) All laws that are enacted, have a two-year expiration date (aka sunset date) than cannot be eliminated or changed. If Congress really likes the law, they have to renew it every two years, or it's gone.
2.) Every law must be renewed separately. Congress can't just pass something that says, "All the laws passed in 2013, are hereby renewed for another two years." It has to bring each law up individually, discuss it, vote on its renewal, and pass the renewal.
This would keep Congress busy enough with renewals, that they would have to constantly decide which laws they REALLY wanted to keep, and lose the ones they maybe don't want so much. And if they want to pass new laws, that will add to the renewal burden, enough that they would have to let some others fall off the table eventually.
This would keep the burden of laws we have to follow, reduced to just the important ones.
The Framers always had the idea that Americans could get along fine without a zillion laws telling them what to do. And the Fed govt was to be only a caretaker of matters that people usually didn't deal with much anyway - foreign relations, weights and measures, courts, law enforcement, resolving conflicts between states etc. - see Article 1 Sec. 8.
Maybe the time limit should be three years. Whatever it is, once set, it's the same for all laws, and cannot be altered or eliminated. That long after the date a law is enacted (or renewed), it is automatically repealed, unless it has been explicitly renewed for another equal time interval.
Laws that everybody obviously wants - laws against murder, against theft, etc., also get the same expiration date. And Congress would keep them at the top of the list of laws they want to renew, so those laws will always be with us. But maybe the requirement that we have certain size toilets with a certain water flow rate, can be handled fine by ordinary people, and so there's no real harm in letting the laws dictating such things fall off the books.
Advantages? Disadvantages? There are some of each, but I'd say we'd be a lot better off overall with such a law, than we are at present.
Of course, the leftist fanatics will say that anything that reduces the central govt's power is automatically bad. That's why they are leftist fanatics.
What do normal people say about it?
What if we had an unrepealable law (Constitutional amendment maybe? Those are VERY seldom repealed, and it takes a huge effort) that said that:
1.) All laws that are enacted, have a two-year expiration date (aka sunset date) than cannot be eliminated or changed. If Congress really likes the law, they have to renew it every two years, or it's gone.
2.) Every law must be renewed separately. Congress can't just pass something that says, "All the laws passed in 2013, are hereby renewed for another two years." It has to bring each law up individually, discuss it, vote on its renewal, and pass the renewal.
This would keep Congress busy enough with renewals, that they would have to constantly decide which laws they REALLY wanted to keep, and lose the ones they maybe don't want so much. And if they want to pass new laws, that will add to the renewal burden, enough that they would have to let some others fall off the table eventually.
This would keep the burden of laws we have to follow, reduced to just the important ones.
The Framers always had the idea that Americans could get along fine without a zillion laws telling them what to do. And the Fed govt was to be only a caretaker of matters that people usually didn't deal with much anyway - foreign relations, weights and measures, courts, law enforcement, resolving conflicts between states etc. - see Article 1 Sec. 8.
Maybe the time limit should be three years. Whatever it is, once set, it's the same for all laws, and cannot be altered or eliminated. That long after the date a law is enacted (or renewed), it is automatically repealed, unless it has been explicitly renewed for another equal time interval.
Laws that everybody obviously wants - laws against murder, against theft, etc., also get the same expiration date. And Congress would keep them at the top of the list of laws they want to renew, so those laws will always be with us. But maybe the requirement that we have certain size toilets with a certain water flow rate, can be handled fine by ordinary people, and so there's no real harm in letting the laws dictating such things fall off the books.
Advantages? Disadvantages? There are some of each, but I'd say we'd be a lot better off overall with such a law, than we are at present.
Of course, the leftist fanatics will say that anything that reduces the central govt's power is automatically bad. That's why they are leftist fanatics.
What do normal people say about it?
