Radical transparency in the legislative process

The current system is antiquated, overly complex, and often deliberately opaque. Massive omnibus bills hundreds or even thousands of pages long are rushed through Congress with little genuine understanding by legislators or the public. The 900-plus-page Affordable Care Act remains a classic example. How many members of Congress fully read and understood every provision before voting? How many citizens did? Even today, more than a decade later, most Americans still do not know all the details buried in that law.

We already have a public legislative database (Congress.gov and similar platforms) that contains most of the necessary information: bill text, amendments, sponsors, and voting records. It is not user-friendly for the average person. Navigating it is difficult, summaries are often missing or overly technical, amendment histories are hard to follow, and there is little plain-language explanation of expected impacts. This must change.

Three rules

• Single-subject rule Every bill must address only one subject. If a bill violates this rule, it is automatically invalidated. This eliminates stuffing unrelated provisions, special-interest giveaways, and hidden agendas into massive omnibus packages.
• Reading or waiting requirement Before any vote, Congress must either wait at least three full days after the final text of a bill is publicly published, or have the entire bill read aloud in full session. Narrow exceptions are allowed only for genuine emergencies that meet strict, predefined criteria, such as immediate national security threats or natural disasters.
• Plain language and full transparency Every bill must include a clear, plain-English summary (limited to a few pages), a detailed history of all amendments with explanations for each change, identification of the sponsor and supporters, and a statement of expected outcomes and costs. All of this must be easy to find and understand.

We will strongly encourage the development of a modern, highly user-friendly national legislative tracking platform, building upon and dramatically improving existing databases like Congress.gov, that makes it simple for any citizen to see what is being proposed, who is proposing it, how the bill has changed, and what impact it is expected to have.

These reforms apply to all federal legislation, with the narrow emergency exceptions noted above. Enforcement is straightforward: any bill that violates these transparency requirements is automatically nullified.

No more “pass it to find out what’s in it”

Just as we declared that corporations are not people and required full disclosure of political funding, we now demand that the laws themselves be created in full view of the people they are meant to serve. No more hidden provisions. Citizens deserve to know clearly and honestly what their government is doing in their name.

When combined with the previous steps, this creates a powerful virtuous cycle. Fairer economics reduces the pressure for corrupt political deals. Transparent politics makes it much harder for concentrated wealth to rig the system. And transparent lawmaking ensures that the resulting policies actually serve the public interest.