Legislative Evaluation Assembly of Minnesota

Introduction

One of the most serious threats to a “government of the people” on both the federal and state government levels is the combining of several pieces of legislation into single bills, rather than voting on one item at a time. The Founding Fathers were very concerned about this and tried to prevent it, but over the years this is a constitutional process that has been ignored increasingly blatantly. Combining several items into a single bill enables special interests to “buy” the vote of legislators by combining the issue of concern to the legislator with the issues of concern to special interests.

The 2008 TARP bailout is a good example; middle-class voters around the country wrote letters to their congressmen not to vote for the bailout, but to let corrupt financial giants fall and return the economy to those practicing sound financial principles. The bailout bill failed on its own merit. The citizen had spoken. Therefore, “sweeteners” were added to the bill to get it passed over the will of the people. The bill that eventually passed included a host of tax breaks, an increase in the size of bank accounts insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, a requirement that health insurance companies provide more coverage for mental health services, a tax benefit for victims of the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill, and even a tax exemption for makers of children’s wooden arrows. Each one of these measures was added to sway the vote of one or a few legislators to whom obtaining those sweeteners was more important than voting “No” on the bailout.

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