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0 pointsjacques_chester12y ago0 comments

The US system of legislative development is quite flawed. There are a lot of places where changes can be made without attribution, emerging from committees without saying who added what.

In most Parliamentary democracies you can only propose amendments from one of the two chambers, so any amendment can always be traced to the Parliamentarian who moved it.

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saraid21612y ago

I'd support having a nice and loud discussion on doing this. Being able to trace the authorship of line items doesn't seem to have stopped pork in other countries, but it might mitigate it. And we'd be able to yell at people better.

jacques_chesterOP12y ago

There are other amendments that cut back on some of the worst pork.

The Australian Constitution in section 55 forbids tax and spending legislation to deal with any other subject. If an Act includes other material, it's void, it has no effect.

This prevents the American situation of omnibus bills, rider amendments and the like.

We still get pork barrelling here; but between S 55, fused executive and legislative and strict party discipline, the political incentives are differently structured for individual politicians. It creates a stronger check on profligacy.

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