Listening to some of the debate surrounding the oil bill passed by the house last week, I’ve got to wondering. Most legislation is meant to, well, accomplish some goal, say lowering the price of gas at the pump. Perhaps, then, legislation should be required to include a clear statement of this goal, metrics with which to test if this goal is being met at several points in the future, and rollback provisions if it isn’t. Ie, if you think lowering environmental standards will help lower gas prices, cool, but the legislation to do so should include a mechanism by which, say, gas prices in 1, 3 and 5 years are compared against some formula, and if it turns out that prices are still high and oil companies are raking in record profits, then perhaps your bill didn’t work so good, and should automatically expire. Any thoughts?
This would be tough to enact in the real world where so many factors are interdependant. To use your example, how can you say the Low Gas Price Act didn’t work? Maybe it kept prices from increasing to even higher levels. Or suppose the National Institute of Health funds a five year program to eradicate cancer. At the end of the five years, if cancer still exists, should we renew or expand the program or just declare cancer the winner and shut it down?
What Little Nemo said. There are so many factors involved in gas prices you just can’t tell whether your Act failed or not. It might have worked just fine until some exogeneous developments caused gas prices to go up.
Do you think its OK to just pass legislation blindly, like throwing darts at a board? To say “we don’t know if this legislation will work, and won’t be able to tell if is working, but lets just throw a few billion dollars at the problem and hope for the best.” Perhaps if you can’t tell if a piece of legislation is doing what its supposed to, then its, you know, bad legislation?
No, I don’t think it’s okay to enact legislation blindly, Nor do I think it’s okay to repeal legislation blindly. All changes in legislation should be made with eyes open.
Legislation isn’t working like that. Every legislative act is discussed in Congress (or any other national parliament) after having been scrutinized by government experts and the opposition. It is, furthermore, subject to public debate outside Congress, and government, opposition, and the general public constantly keep their eyes on acts that are already in operation, always ready to initiate their repeal if things aren’t working the way they were thought to work.
At least in theory; in practice, there are deficits, I admit. But the legislative is far from working blindly and without review.