Regulatory Overhaul and Review Act (Debating)

[DemPGH]

The final is a definite improvement, but are we opening up the possibility that we could be deluged by frivolous requests? I'm thinking of the citizen's initiative thread, of course, 98% of which always yielded entirely frivolous items and is / was / has been functionally useless. Granted, I doubt that this is as broad as that because we're talking about regulations that exist already, but just wanted to throw that out there.

[DemPGH]

I suppose this is technically a redraft, but I want to be clear that we are in fact asking for a majority. I don't want to make it two-thirds, but I do think it's fair that if we're going to ask the Senate to just start repealing regulations that we should have a majority.

As far as repealing laws through a mechanism like this, I'm not sure about the constitutionality of that. But who knows.

Anyway,

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[DemPGH]

I oppose this redraft. If Senators don't even bother to vote, that's their problem.

Why would this be unconstitutional?

Hey man, I talked to you just recently about the farm bill, and I mentioned I'll support with a modified 2.2 because look, I don't want people getting sick or salmonella or whatever. I'll work with you on this. I don't think a 6-4 majority is unreasonable when we're talking about allowing the public to instigate the rollback of regulations, that's all. I'll sign it, but I just hope that we can have a clear +1 majority before we just repeal regulations. I'm not asking for 7-3. Just a majority. LMK.

I'd accept a 6-5 tiebreaker on this. So the text would read,

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[DemPGH]

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This is the redraft, so we're clear.

A few posts down I offered an alternative for discussion, but it was deemed to accomplish the exact same things as the final text, so I just want to see if you guys will approve this or not.

[DemPGH]

Debate should be resumed.

So would a citizen be able to say, "I want Clause 6 removed from Statute Y from 2010" and then the Senate would vote to repeal it? Hmm.