Dear Congressman Amash,
On behalf of National Taxpayers Union (NTU) and our members across the country, I write to endorse two pieces of legislation which you have authored, the Readable Legislation Act and the Searchable Legislation Act, H.R. 5142 and H.R. 5143, respectively. Both of these bills intend to make the legislative process more transparent and make legislation much easier to understand for the public, members of Congress and their staff.
Understanding changes to proposed legislation can be an uphill struggle for even the most skilled policymakers and virtually impossible for the average taxpayer. Fully analyzing changes to legislation can take many hours of research depending how many changes were made. Thankfully, the Readable Legislation Act would require bills to include the original statutory language accompanied with the changes or strikethroughs. This format has already been adopted by most state legislatures, making their process much easier to understand.
Taxpayers also deserve to have legislation that is easily accessible and searchable. It can be an arduous task for taxpayers to find a bill online and then navigate through multiple pages of text to identify relevant sections. This makes it difficult to determine a bill’s possible effect on their wallet or community. The Searchable Legislation Act would require every bill, resolution or document produced by Congress be published in searchable electronic formats. This is an important piece of legislation that Congress can use to illustrate that it stands for accountability and transparency.
As the trust in Congress continues to hover near record-lows, these pieces of legislation demonstrate to the public that the legislative branch is becoming more transparent and open. Improving access to easily understandable and searchable legislative text will allow Members, staff, and Americans to be better involved in the democratic process. NTU is pleased to endorse these commonsense solutions and urge all Members of Congress to cosponsor these legislative proposals.
Sincerely,
Thomas Aiello, Policy and Government Affairs Associate