> How do you define "a single topic"? Who gets to decide what is and isn't topical?

Easy. If 1/3 of Congress votes for something to be split, then it's split. (Kind of the opposite of the 2/3 super majority rule.)

As simple as that. Let the people actually voting decide if something is a single topic.

Yes, this could lead to nonsense where people split things to insane levels just to disrupt things, but I suspect it would not come to that because they would be ridiculed, and it would be just a waste of time for them since splitting something doesn't mean it doesn't get voted on in the end.

I hate to break it to you, but you have a bunch of people in Congress right now gaining politically by being disruptive. So your failure scenario is occurring now without your mechanism.

If the failure mode of this proposal (excessive splitting of bills) is less disruptive than the current situation (attaching bill-killing, shutdown-threatening riders), then it seems to me we would still be better off with this implemented than without.

In addition, as long as the votes for this are public, it seems like it would be harder to defend capricious action for political gain, since anyone could see that this group of senators all voted to split legislation that clearly should not have been split and then take them to task for it. It could even be mandatory that a proposal to split a bill must be accompanied by an explanation (also publicly available) of why it should be split that way. It's one thing in my opinion to put something controversial into an unrelated bill--there will always be people who are in favor of that, so it is politically defensible and can score points--but it is another thing entirely to try to (literally) rationalize the frivolous division of a cohesive bill.

It actually strikes me as quite an elegant solution to the problem of riders and sprawling legislation.

You believe that by increasing transparency and granularity, voters will punish or reward Congresscritters more effectively and efficiently.

I disagree strongly. I submit that most voters do not follow the legislative process very closely and vote accordingly. Rather, I submit that most voters make decisions emotionally using far less than the totality of the relevant information currently available to them. At this very moment, we have a batch of Congresscritters who gain the support of their constituents by obstructing their opposition by any means possible. Questions of frivolousness or caprice are not considered. This is the situation here, today, and now.

I think your notion fails because it adds extra information that voters will disregard. Because this information will be disregarded, it will not significantly impact the behavior of voters. The net result is likely to be an increased legislative overhead, more procedural tools to be wielded as partisan weapons, and voter behavior not shifting significantly. As a result, the failure mode of this proposal is everything wrong with the current (attaching bill-killing, shutdown-threatening riders) PLUS excessive bill-splitting for the sake of obstruction.

Might I suggest that your solutions should not hinge on sudden and dramatic shifts of voter behavior at a scale of many millions?

Sounds very easily DOS-able

I think that a 'bill' should have a statement (which is not actual 'law') that clearly records the intended effects of the 'bill'. This could be seen as an executive summary.

The contents of the bill that are actually the changes to the code of law would prescribe how that effect is to occur. I would also like to see bills define, in law, how they are funded (even if that is, 'this is funded from a general fund').

I think that the above should be true for every level of governance. The bill should be rejected (patch refused), in it's entirety, if any material not 'directly' related to the intended purpose of the bill is within it, or if it conflicts with existing law in a way that is not corrected by the bill's application to the law. This is what the legal system in a given jurisdiction should do. All law would automatically be reviewed for correctness and compatibility.

How do you define "directly"? Who gets to judge? Who enforces?

You haven't really answered these questions. You've just postulated that someone will, implicitly assuming that nobody involved will ever be partisan.

There's no way a provision as "nice" as this would go through. Of course lawmakers want ways to sneak things in.

Oh, what are those last few pages you added? Never you mind, those are tertiary. This is all in the name of protecting the environment, and its citizens, and their metadata...

Seems like it would fall to the judicial branch to decide if something is topical or not if it was that contested. However, that would lead to accusations of the judiciary being involved in making the law, though their power would be limited to splitting bills into smaller bills.

> Myself, I see it only making things worse.

How?

Unless you can show how it could make the situation actually worse, your argument doesn't hold.

It would at least be "as bad as now" or better.

It adds complexity and creates another procedural weapon to kill bills without discussing their contents. I see both of those as strictly worse.

> How do you define "a single topic"?

The original bill. As in, no riders at all.

So, you'd prohibit all amendments, but allow unlimited mixing of unrelated subjects as long as they were incorporated in the original bill as proposed, so instead of adding riders to existing bills, politicians would let one measure die, and introduce a new one with the all the various mix of subjects (including the central focus of the old one) that would have been in the first measure with added riders.

Aside from moving part of the action from formal amendment processes to informal processes, I don't see what change that gets you.

But does that change anything?

"Party X votes no in favor of bill Z, but we will vote again if you introduce bill Y which is the exact same as bill Z except with a new section funding for building a shipyard in the congressional district of a popular guy in Party X"