Durbin's Grand Idea: Ordinary People Should Write Legislation
Here's a new idea for the Internet age: Let's use the combined computing power of the Internet community to write legislation.
The topic of the bill will be something about which many Internet users are familiar, the deployment of high-speed Internet, in which the U.S. is particularly deficient contrasted with other countries around the world.
This is Dick Durbin's big experiment.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), the Senate Majority Whip, is taking a new tactic to writing legislation. He’s letting the public in on the process and the topic couldn’t be better: America’s broadband policy.
In a posting on Matt Stoller’s new blog, Durbin said that, starting tomorrow night (July 24), he will be online to discuss what our broadband policies should be. There will be a series of three principles around which Durbin wants to craft legislation: “(1) Broadband access must be universal and affordable; (2) We need to preserve an online environment for innovation; and (3) We need to ensure that broadband technology enables more voices to be heard.”
To his credit, Durbin said he’s engaging in this process because “We need more public participation and transparency in the way Congress crafts significant legislation. This is an approach to legislation that has never been tried before.” If the model works, Durbin said it could be expanded to other subject areas. Second, he said that the U.S. has no broadband policy and is falling behind foreign competitors.
Durbin has introduced one broadband bill already, S. 1190 that would establish a grant program modeled after Connect Kentucky to the rest of the country. The bill would award grants to statewide organizations to identify and track the availability of broadband and to help localities figure out what are the barriers to broadband deployment. Durbin’s legislative language has already been incorporated into Senate legislation (S. 1492) that proposes new broadband data-collection standards for the FCC, and probably would be included in any new House legislation on the same topic.
To the extent that Durbin’s gambit engages the interested public in the issue, the effort is fine. There are many people online who have great ideas about how the broadband world should be shaped. Bringing online people who aren’t there now should be one hot topic for discussion. The pressure will be on the Durbin staff to come up with a piece of legislation to reflect the discussion, as the people who took part in the discussion will be watching.
Durbin is planning to come up with a legislative draft after the August recess and to post the bill, written in formal legislative language. That draft will show how the different parts of the bill reflect the previous online discussions and ideas. People will then have the opportunity to have a discussion about the draft before introduction.
The civics lesson aspects of the Durbin project are phenomenal. It could give a real insight into how a legislative process could work. No doubt, many people will ask, as do lobbyists – why did this idea get in and not that? Why did you do something this way? The replies will be illuminating.
The civic lesson shouldn’t stop there. Its one thing to introduce legislation. That happens all the time. Legislative assistants frequently circulate drafts of legislation and hold many meetings just to get some language in shape to introduce and to gain support.
If Durbin’s bill introduction project is the undergrad project, the graduate-level project will be actually trying to pass something. Passing legislation is much harder than introducing it.
Passing meaningful telecommunications legislation is very difficult because just about any progressive ideas or bills geared to introducing competition or innovation will incur the wrath of the telephone and/or cable companies, and possibly the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as well. As we’ve written before, the big phone companies control as many votes on the Democratic side of committees, particularly the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as they do on the Republican side. Durbin has the disadvantage of not being on the committee of jurisdiction, the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee, but the added advantage of being in the leadership.
Legislation crafted with the help of ordinary citizens? What a radical idea!
(Is this legal without lobbyist oversight?)
July 23, 2007 2:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
They should give us the same rights they have. When they're done with the bill and just before it passes, let us add earmarks!
I want to add a rider called the "Destor23 Free French Wine Importation Act of 2007."
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 23, 2007 2:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
For cryin' out loud, he's from Illinois. Illinoisians have always been able to write their own legislation, if they knew who to pay off.
July 23, 2007 3:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, kinda like the oil guys in Texas, the lumber gang in Idaho, the Growers in CA. the Daddy Warbucks bankers in NY, ADM in Kansas, the Sugar Mafia in Florida, and the entire frikkin defense industry. :-)
July 23, 2007 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Durbin,
Dumbest frikkin idea I ever heard.
July 23, 2007 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
To you snarkmeisters I gotta say this is great news. I organized a citizen's lobbying effort and got into see one of his aides along with a bunch of other people to protect net neutrality last year. I'm gonna send all those guys this post. Durbin is da man!
July 23, 2007 3:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
www.whitehouse.gov
User Name: Hally Burton
Password: TexasTea
I got it off Bugmenot!
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 23, 2007 5:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sure why not. Bush/Cheney don't think we have republic. Now Senators are abdicating their responsibilities? Let's go straight to a direct democracy. How about we pattern the first new law on this:
I think I'll let someone else actually propose it. :-)
Disclaimer: Reponse is to the post header, not the actual post which seems to be saying that Senator Durbin is looking for input -- not new law clerks.
July 23, 2007 5:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe next Durbin will propose letting the people perform surgery via the Internet. After all, between Wikipedia and some DVDs of ER and Grey's Anatomy surgeons are now essentially unnecessary. Sheesh.
Noel
July 23, 2007 8:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, Frist diagnoses people via video.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 23, 2007 9:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
This suggests this is some kind of big open question whose answer no one exactly knows.
I'll remind Durbin that dozens of industrial countries have figured out how to make the internet fast, cheap, and open.
The issue is not how to do it. The issue is to do it. There is NOTHING to debate.
July 23, 2007 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm fairly surprised how negative the reaction to this idea is around here. Just about a century ago, maybe a little more, the first Progressive Movement did four things: Nationally, it provided for the direct election of Senators, and in many states provided for the Initiative, Referendum, and Recall...allowing direct voter participation in government at in the name of the Greater Democracy. This would seem to be a logical extension of those ideas.
Minor experiments have continued since: "people's earmarks" in the form of check-offs on tax returns and the like.
There's nothing to guarantee "the people" won't "write" bad legislation...but there's also no guarantee that professional lobbyists won't write "bad" legislation. Given our self-interest, I rather think we might do a better job than Verizon and the rest.
I'd hope for additional experiments in the future. Suppose, for example, we did have a true "paygo" system, but a three step process rather than two. As today, the authorization and appropriation steps would be separated from each other. What if some system were enacted so no more than 90% of the amount authorized could be appropriated: the other 10% would be funded through a check-off system on person's tax returns. In other words, I could direct 10% of my tax bill to the government programs in which I most deeply believed, whether aid to education, environmental protection, urban or rural redevelopment--whatever. Lobbyists would have to lobby me directly, and my representatives would have a sure and certain indicator of what I really wanted them to do by my willingness to pay for it.
aMike
July 23, 2007 10:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
I agree with the first part of your post amike. I'm appalled that people here are so cynical. Just last year we couldn't even get Durbin to commit to fight against Steven's bill in the Senate which would have allowed the likes of AT&T, Verizon and Comcast to dictate which websites would be promoted to high speed connections and which would be shoved to the side streets of the web.
If you'd like to wait forever for TPM to come up on your screen or see Josh's bandwidth/access charges go thru the roof while preferred sites like Powerline or Instapundit benefit from newer tech, faster speeds at cut rate prices then by all means just ignore our government. They'll please the people who do give them input.
As for that last 10% checkoff, you'll have 35% of this country demanding we build the Great Wall of Mexico on our southern border and stationing 100,000 troops there because Repubs are apparently still more organized than we are.
The lazy cynics on our side won't even bother to check anything.
There was a great article on TPM Cafe yesterday about how France and S. Korea are kicking our butts on broadband access because of their sensible legislation. It really shows how Michael Powell's FCC helped crush the build out that was just starting in 2001. But I can't find it. Can anybody give me an url for it?
July 24, 2007 4:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, you're right. It's just kind of easy to make fun of and a bit of an irresistable target, even for people like me who think it's a pretty decent experiment.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 24, 2007 6:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
Which is what makes Frist a jackass. I'll never understand how a Harvard-educated surgeon could whore himself out to Administration like he did.
Noel
July 24, 2007 6:52 AM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe my post was cynical but as a practical matter enacting laws should be taken more seriously than it is. Just because the people-at-large might not be any worse than lobbyists and special interests doesn't change the fact that way too many people want a law or rule for just about everything. See Leviticus for what the Hebrews did to the Ten Commandments or the Sharia for what Muslims did to the Five Pillars or the epistles of Paul to see what happen to Jesus' one commandment. For those of a more secular bent, see our tax code.
July 24, 2007 6:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
I wasn't defendin' the guy!
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com
July 24, 2007 6:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
At a gut level, it doesn't feel all that radical. The legislative process traditionally includes things public hearings and, increasingly, polls. (In fact, getting people like Clinton or Romney to take a stand on their own would be the real novelty.) People already use email to reach legislators. So sure, invite comments, but I'd rather they all read Krugman yesterday. Seems like the process is broken for all the usual reasons, Bush/M. Powell deregulation with the goal of cementing monopoly power.
Even Art's other usual worry, two-tiered internet access, bothers me less than the quality of U.S. internet access period. By analogy, you could focus on whether to allow companies to charge extra for premium cable, or you can focus on whether to enforce a monopoly that chooses which cable channels exist, all under control of Fox or Clear Channel. You can focus on whether to allow people to comment on the decision (gee), or you can focus on wiring America and busting the thieves masquerading as a free market.
John
http://www.haberarts.com/
July 24, 2007 7:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Senator Durbin is the Senate Majority WHIP, not the Leader. That, as everyone here knows, is Harry Reid.
I'm rather appalled at the some of the negative reactions here. As someone above said, many pieces of legislation have public hearings, and public input is always a GOOD THING. Each bill is passed on our behalf and we live with the consequences, so we should have the right to have the same access as the big-bucks lobbyists. On top of that, legislation like this should always look for input from the main stake holders, and internet users are major stake holders in broadband policy.
The United States isn't France and it isn't South Korea. That doesn't mean that none of their ideas will work here; it just means that American policy will have to drawn on the lessons of their success to craft our own, different, policy. I'd like those ideas to be debated in the open, by people who know what they're talking about, rather than legislation written by lobbyists in Washington.
Public participation is democracy. If we want the government to just run on autopilot and "Do the Right Thing", then just shut the whole thing and crown Bush king.
Scott
July 24, 2007 7:30 AM | Reply | Permalink
This thread reflects confusion about participatory democracy.
There are plenty of political decisions that involve choosing among different reasonable options, in which case the benefit of broad public participation is quite obvious.
In other cases, there is only one reasonable option. The others are so obviously bad they're not worth discussing. The only question is how one goes about implementing that sole reasonable option.
In this case, we all know the Internet should be fast, cheap, open, widespread. I tell Durbin: go and make that happen! If you can't, you'll get fired. If you can, you'll get reelected.
American politics has become the art of passing the buck. Even on such a trivial issue as broadband (trivial in the sense that pretty much every advanced country has managed to "solve" it) we need the "wisdom of crowds" to get anything done.
Yes, America is sooo different from the rest of the world. To get anything done here is so much more difficult than elsewhere (funny how I grew up here being brainwashed that it was just the opposite).
How about building levees in New Orleans? Should we "use the combined computing power of the Internet community" to decide how tall and thick they should be?
July 24, 2007 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
"........the deployment of high speed internet..."
Laudable, I support it.
as to this part;
"Here's a new idea for the Internet age: Let's use the combined computing power of the Internet community to write legislation."
Imagine Pat Robertson and his ilk marshalling the troops to get legislation passed with Bush and the Republicans in control. You would have to walk around the monument to the 10 Commandments when you went to City Hall for your marriage license, not to mention students of different religions and atheists having to pray to Jesus Christ during school hours.
Oh, did I forget to mention Bible Class?
Gays need not apply.
Then again maybe all this crap is already happening.
July 24, 2007 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Probably not, but maybe using the combined computing power of the Internet to decide that they should be rebuilt to withstand a category 5 storm, that they should be built before the rapture comes, and that if they fail the directors of the agency responsible should spend 25 years hard labor cleaning black mold off of flooded buildings might not be a bad idea.
aMike
July 24, 2007 12:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think an even better idea is to put each line item in the national budget on line and let people express their preferences on the expenditures. Drafting legislation en masse is hard because the wording is so open-ended. A yes - no vote on spending money is a lot easier to make work.
July 24, 2007 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
Agreed.
July 24, 2007 5:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's an idea people could really get fired up about -- Open Source Legislation. Maybe the Open Source Software community could serve as a model for how this could work.
On the other hand, I see a new reality series: So You Think You Can Legislate. Which legislation gets voted off the docket, and which is safe? Vote for your favorite by text messaging to...
And another: Amending With The Stars. Tonight's contestants: Ed Begley, Jr., Drew Carey, George Clooney, Bo Derek, Michael J. Fox, Ted Nugent, Martin Sheen, Travis Tritt
July 25, 2007 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink