Helping the US Congress

Around the dinner table this evening we talked about the US Congress Conference Committee hammering out the "sweeping financial overhaul" bill.

The Washington Post reported "Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee led the effort in the Senate," said "No one will know until this is actually in place how it works."

That statement is, at one level scary, but at another level not unexpected.  I have heard that sometimes staffers are still updating bills after the final vote and the bill is on the way to the President for his signature.

But, one would have thought that Senator Dodd and Representative Barney Frank, or at least their staffers, would have had some idea of how the bill would work.

Then my daughter came up with an excellent idea.  By, I assume, a Constitutional Amendment, we require the Vice President and the Speaker of the House to administer a 25 question tests, before any votes, to all members of their individual Houses.  The test would cover the bill under consideration and those who passed the test would get to vote and the others would not.

Regards  —  Cliff