Just Spit It Out, Congress!

"It will be of little avail to the people if the laws are so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." - James Madison, 4th President of the United States and "Father of the U.S. Constitution"

No one likes to hear themselves talk more than politicians. Not even preachers… and that’s saying something.

Apparently, the same is true when it comes to the written word. Members of Congress seem incapable of writing bills in concise, simple language that everyday Americans can read and understand.

Maybe that’s on purpose, to confuse the common man and keep him in the dark. Or maybe it’s because Congressmen and Senators write the way they talk – incessantly and often nonsensically.

Here are a few examples of a growing (and very disturbing) trend…

In the 80th Congress, which met from 1947 to 1949, bills averaged 2.5 pages in length. Today, in the 119th Congress, the average bill length is 17.9 pages. That’s more than a 700% increase!

Ironically, combined congressional bills have averaged 4-6 million words for more than three-quarters of a century. That means that fewer bills are being written, but each one is seven times longer than its predecessors.

It’s as if today’s legislators are being paid by the page.

For instance, the bill that established the IRS and the personal income tax in 1913 was a mere 14 pages and the 1970 bill that created the EPA (the Environmental Protection Agency) was just 4 pages.

Conversely, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 contained more than 2,500 pages and an additional 17,000 pages of regulations. No wonder Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”

Another behemoth of a bill was the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 that sought to promote financial stability, enhance fiscal transparency, prevent taxpayer-funded bailouts, and protect consumers from abusive financial practices. It weighed in at a voluminous 1,800 pages… and change.

Such excessive verbosity led Rep Tom Garrett (R-VA) to introduce the READ IT (Review Every Act Diligently In Total) Act of 2018. Garrett was angry that he and other members were handed a 2,232-page omnibus bill to fund the government… and then asked to vote on it 18 hours later.

“How fast can you read?” Garrett asked rhetorically. “Can you read 2,232 pages in only 18 hours? That would be 124 pages per hour for 18 hours without a break and with complete comprehension.”

Sadly, Garrett’s bill failed to gain traction in the House, just like Sen. Rick Scott’s “Read the Bill” Act failed in the Senate in 2023. Currently, the House requires 72 hours between a bill’s introduction and a final vote, but that rule can be waived in order to pass “urgent” legislation. The Senate has no set timeframe.

When I ran for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010, I recorded a video of me sitting at a desk behind tall stacks of copy paper. I used those optics to say that if elected, I would introduce a bill limiting all federal legislation to 100 pages or less.

If I were running today, I would cut that number in half. After all, if you can’t say something in 50 pages, it’s probably not worth saying.

Another thing that gets my goat as a transplanted Floridian who has loved living in the Sunshine State since 2011, is the ease with which we amend our state constitution. The United States Constitution was ratified in 1789 and since then, there have been a total of 27 amendments.

By contrast, the latest version of the Florida State Constitution was adopted in 1968, and since then it has been amended a whopping 144 times.

That’s 27 amendments in 237 years versus 144 amendments in just 58 years. Something’s glaringly wrong with that equation and we had better fix it sooner rather than later by raising the threshold for a proposed amendment to pass from 60% to at least 67%... or even 70%.

Actually, if our legislators in Tallahassee would do their jobs and pass some tough and proactive laws instead of kicking the proverbial can down the road, a lot of the proposed constitutional amendments wouldn’t need to be introduced in the first place.

One can only hope.