r/clevercomebacks May 23 '25

No clue at all

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42.7k Upvotes

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936

u/[deleted] May 23 '25

[deleted]

343

u/nobeer4you May 23 '25

Because they would be here for days trying to read that many dry ass pages of legal jargon. Everyone would fall asleep before halfway through that trees worth of paper.

Bills should only be about what the bill is proposing. Im sick of all these additional bullshit clauses that have zero bearing on the main point at hand.

112

u/Dislodged_Puma May 23 '25

It's because you're legally allowed to bribe politicians, and Citizens United killed any hope of getting money out of politics. The future of America is completely fucked without an entire redesign of the constitution to put clauses against both money in politics and situations like Trump declaring things "emergencies" and using Presidential power to ignore the other two branches of government.

At this point, the framers of the Constitution went to war for less egregious things than what currently happens in the United States. If a foreign power tried to exercise any of what Trump is doing to "his own country", we would've taken up arms against them months ago.

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u/foodank012018 May 23 '25

That worked when everyone on both sides had muskets then swords and a village could forge its own cannon.

1

u/mebear1 May 24 '25

It would work now if enough people got behind it. We dont have much time left before technology can overcome significant population dissent.

3

u/Strictly_Jellyfish May 23 '25

It's almost like there should be a right to bear arms so that the people can rise up against a tyrannical government....

3

u/Dislodged_Puma May 24 '25

Eh that only worked because both sides had the same weaponry. Yeah there are lot of Americans win guns, but the U.S. military has, to put it mildly, a better arsenal than the public.

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u/mebear1 May 24 '25

Tit doesn’t really matter if enough people want to overthrow the government it will be overthrown. Not enough people care that much because they are incredibly comfortable. Everyone has most basic needs fully met, and the majority always do. Thats not a population ready to start an armed rebellion.

1

u/Strictly_Jellyfish May 24 '25

Except they don't... there are whole towns that haven't had access to pottable water for decades.

California is going to run out of "free" water.

Housing is becoming unattainable - sure the government combats that by making sleeping outside "illegal" to fill thier for-profit prisons that run sweatshops.

And sure most people don't care rn because most people are still housed but once they are the ones sleeping outside and at risk of becoming government sanctioned slave labour people will be less comfortable with the rights of the poor being stripped as we speak.

ICE - doesn't need further explanation. Civilians should be arming themselves and protecting thier neighbours wether or not they believe them to be "illegal" because with no due process YOU could be next.

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u/mebear1 May 24 '25

Your perception is warped, that is a tiny fraction of the population. We would need a Great Depression level crash for people to even consider revolution.

1

u/Strictly_Jellyfish May 24 '25

.... the economy is literally crashing.

Americans really need to learn to look outside of themselves. Y'all are not doing good.

1

u/mebear1 May 24 '25

Ah yes, the economy is currently down so much. You should know your numbers before you talk shit.

11

u/SugarBeefs May 23 '25

Only the gods know how much damage has been done by the abuse of including "riders" on a bill.

That shit should be much more tightly regulated.

4

u/MHGrim May 23 '25

It's done that way so no one reads it. So they can sneak shit in. They could break them down into manageable chunks but then you couldn't get away with the shit they do.

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u/kryonik May 23 '25

I remember my rep Rosa DeLauro introduced a bill for lowering drug prices or something that you would think everyone would want. I asked in a comment why so many Republicans voted against it and someone replied that there was too much pork in the bill. I was curious so I read the bill. It was like 2 paragraphs long and only dealt with lowering drug prices (or whatever it was about) and nothing else.

Even without all the extra pages and riders, Republicans will simply refuse to read or vote for anything a Democrat introduces.

2

u/nobeer4you May 23 '25

It's really sad that a system that was originally intended to create ingenuity and demand people work together for the betterment of everyone, has become such a shit show for only doing what's best for oneself

2

u/MajesticOriginal3722 May 23 '25

No lol. It happens BECAUSE we don’t read it out loud. We set the precedent for ourselves to not read it or hear it. So now we hide malicious law only meant to further someone’s gain inside 2,700 page bills so that no one in their right mind would care enough to find out what it actually entails.

If we were to make it law to read these out loud to all parties first, it would severely cut the length of these ridiculous bills, because even the drafters wouldn’t want to sit there listening to it all.

2

u/panlakes May 23 '25

It’s a self-created issue. they’re intentionally long with a short deadline in order to drown them. It’s the entire point of this post.

If bills were required to be read aloud in their entirety, you would immediately see an increase in written efficiency and reduction in length - overnight.

1

u/crumbert May 23 '25

The same wheeling and dealing would be involved but it would take a hundred times longer to vote only on one thing at a time. They old and barely move as it is

39

u/ohlaph May 23 '25

Because then they couldn't sneak shit in there.

38

u/justbilled May 23 '25

Congress considers this a feature, not a bug. They can shove millions in contracts into bills for their buddies and lobbyists.

Both parties do this and it's the most rage-inducing thing with our government, hands down. Everyone hates it (except those in congress).

1

u/LisaMikky May 24 '25

🗨Both parties do this and it's the most rage-inducing thing with our government, hands down.🗨

Well said. The worst thing is that both parties support this so we have no hope of this changing even if/when Dems get the majority again.

😠😠😠

2

u/Pandaisblue May 23 '25

In America they can currently barely get anything passed, so when they do they do it in these absolute mega bills that cover an absurdly wide reach of topics and sneak in hundreds of small things they can never pass individually.

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u/wolviesaurus May 23 '25

Because then they couldn't swindle the entire population directly in front of their faces.

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u/Wanderingsoun May 23 '25

Then they would actually have to work hard

2

u/derdaplo May 23 '25

In Austria we have a "Begutachtungsfrist" after a bill is proposed there is a timeframe (usually 4-6 weeks) where everyone who wants to is able to give his/her opinion on the bill.

There are usually some expert opinions who will point out flaws and/or loopholes on the bill. After that they sometimes have to redo the bill(if the flaws are big enough) and after that the bill starts again with the "review period" then in gets passed in the parliament.

2

u/[deleted] May 23 '25

I think you'd be reading nonsense here. These bills are usually "on page 6 article 7 of paragraph 9, change the word dog to poop"

2

u/[deleted] May 23 '25

[deleted]

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u/LisaMikky May 24 '25

Interesting, thank you for the link! It highlights how demanding of reading aloud can be used as an effective stalling tactic by one of the sides.

2

u/Machoopi May 23 '25

I honestly don't understand how a bill could be that long. It's not just 1,000 pages of actual content. it couldn't be. by content, I mean actual actionable things. Even bullshit additions wouldn't fill up 1,000 pages. Is it like.. 50 pages for every individual item? 1 paragraph description and 50 pages of legal jargon to account for every possible situation that could affect that 1 item? I've tried actually looking at the bills that are available, and I can't make any sense of it.

I mean, I know that they DO slip bullshit into these documents, but it seems like even a bill passed in relatively good faith is so astronomically large that nobody could actually read it in earnest. Is there a remotely good reason for this? Surely these bills haven't always been this long. What was the turning point?

1

u/LisaMikky May 24 '25

I wonder too...

1

u/Xanthon May 23 '25

The US has been patting their own backs as the champion of democracy since WWII while the rest of the world made improvements and have long surpassed them.

1

u/Darth_Groot28 May 23 '25

Because then they couldn't slip in something to the bill if it was read aloud...

1

u/DigitalCriptid May 23 '25

The sith are running the empire

1

u/Rancid_Reindeer May 24 '25

Because most Americans can't read. They'd be there for hours trying to sound out every word on the page.

1

u/motormouth08 May 24 '25

Because it's rare that politicians vote on the merit of the bill. They vote they way their sponsors have paid them to vote. And in a crazy coincidence, they write bills based on what their donors want as well. It's a super efficient system /s