SENATE STANDING COMMITTEE: Gov't Oversight and Reform (Game Reform/PC)

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

With no additions being made, I am going to contace those on the list and ask them advocate for the Amendment.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Thank you, Mr. PPT.

I introduced this amendment on the president's behalf both as a service to him and because I support it. Every presidential candidate runs on an agenda, but unfortunately that often gets filtered out by the agenda of the real power in Atlasia, the Senate. This legislation does nothing to reduce the Senate's power, and after introduction the President can still only sign or veto his bill if passed. This simply streamlines the process of an executive agenda so that Nix/Oakvale/Matt won't have to bug us to put stuff in the queue for him.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

When has it been filtered out by it not being introduced as opposed to passage being rejected? I would assume you aren't planning after that too for obvious reasons. And if it doesn't get introduced, doesn't that say something about the liklihood of passage?

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

Well not "filtered out", but it's acted as an unnecessary hurdle to presidential agendas. This is simply streamlining the process.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Does the President not have to attain at least six votes to pass a bill (seven for an amendment?) If that is the case, how can getting one be an inconvience if he wants it to pass?

[Marokai Backbeat]

I know the common response to this idea has always been "well, it's not a big deal to get someone to sponsor it, so why is this necessary?" I would say that's exactly why it shouldn't be that big of a deal to give the President this power.

This Amendment does little more than remove a bothersome procedural hump, really, and encourages Presidents to introduce their own agendas, straight from the executive's mouth. It doesn't grant the President any sort of voting ability, or in any other way unfairly tilts the odds in the executive's favor, but merely allows the President to easily and swiftly introduce bills of his own accord, wasting as little time as possible in the process.

INTERROGATE ME AS YOU PLEASE, YANKEE.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The reason the line is stated, is because you are asking us to eliminate a barrier between the Executive and Legislative branches, a change that would be only considered if it were of the utmost practical necessity and this doesn't appear to be so. Therefore I would state that unless a case can be made as to the inability of the President to get his legislation introduced in the Senate, it should therefore not be adopted.

Mr. President has not your entire adgenda (Spelled that way for old time sake. ) been introduced at this point?

Here is a another issue. The President is not part of the legislative branch and thus not subject to the anti-clogging rules or any of the Senate rules because the Senate lacks the authority create rules save for those of its own membership. If the President is given this ability, what will stop him from "filling the tree" similar to how the leadership does it in RL? Now there are many general things that are good about the RL system, but a ton of bad specific details that we would be wise not to emulate.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The reason the line is stated, is because you are asking us to eliminate a barrier between the Executive and Legislative branches, a change that would be only considered if it were of the utmost practical necessity and this doesn't appear to be so. Therefore I would state that unless a case can be made as to the inability of the President to get his legislation introduced in the Senate, it should therefore not be adopted.

And if I could prove that was the case, would you not immediately turn it around and claim I was trying to unfairly overrule checks and balances?

It is not necessarily fair to act as if this is an unprecedented and damaging overreach of powers; the Mideast region, of all places, allows the regional executive(s) to introduce legislation for consideration by the regional Assembly. This is done to speed the process and has had no negative affects as far as I can tell.

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This could be easily solved by including relevant amendments to this proposal that would consider the President as under the Senate's rulemaking jurisdiction when it comes to introducing bills.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What negative impact has there been on the speed of the process from the current system? Did not all your posted garbage get introduced, like, ah immediately?

[Marokai Backbeat]

What negative impact has there been on the speed of the process from the current system? Did not all your posted garbage get introduced, like, ah immediately?

Most proposals in my current term have been introduced by friendly Senators, yes, although not all of them (the Anti-Pestering Act was not introduced for a very long time until X suddenly realized it was there) and many bills I've had to specifically ask Senators to introduce as I was writing them. However, during my Vice Presidential term in 2010, many proposals were not introduced, either at all, or were modified by the Senator that introduced them, over the Administration's wishes, and not given a fair debate.

Moreover, removing this procedural requirement eases the burden on my behalf in writing legislation in the first place. If I know I don't have to worry about "shopping" my proposals around in private as or after they are written, I'm more likely to just bang a proposal out in an evening and put it up, knowing that it's immediately in the queue with no fuss and no muss.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

And why the f**k didn't Purple come to me then? "If you write it, I'll introduce it 'as is" has been my policy for four years now. I only meddle if I am asked to write them.

And if you couldn't get a Senator to offer an amendment to give your ideas a vote, then doesn't say something about that form or provision, like that it wasn't supported by any Senators and thus couldn't pass regardless?

And your burden is my concern why? Plus, I don't see how this makes any difference in that regard. Whether or not you have a direct pipeline isn't going to make composition easier.

As I see it, legislation gets weeded out based on how much support they get and if it can't get a single of the Senators to introduce it, it is not goign to get passed anyone and would have wasted the Senate's time. I don't see how getting a bill introduced by one Senator is an undesirable burden, when six have be bought to pass this trash anyone and would seem to be the harder of the two. I am against furthering mixing of the branches, unless a reasonable case can be made on the practical side, that outweighs such concerns and that isn't the case here.

If Senator Napoleon has no statements to make on this matter, plan to bring it up for a recommendation vote. I expect ti to be on the floor rather soon.

[Marokai Backbeat]

You say you want "practical" benefits, but all of your objections are purely ideological or academic in nature.  If this would result in more legislation being written and debated, and more active Presidents proposing more bills, would that not be the only real thing that matters?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

You say you want "practical" benefits, but all of your objections are purely ideological or academic in nature.  If this would result in more legislation being written and debated, and more active Presidents proposing more bills, would that not be the only real thing that matters?

Oblivious, Mr. President. I even said, "if the practical benefits outweighed the undesirable nature of further interwinning the branches for this purpose...".

Plus I fully appreciate you criticizing my "academic" nature in this matter, it just adds more to your right wing credentials.

If I thought that were the case, then obviously I would consider supporting the measure, but it is not. We have had an extensive agenda put forward by yourself under the current system and frankly the Senate is rather bogged down as it is with legislation, and just adding more would not really serve to create much benefit (that is even if I thought there would be more legislation). More then likely any extra legislation would be the President introducing less than stellar bills or bills guarranteed to fail (since those are the mostly what the current system weeds out) and thus the Senate would become little more then the President's legislation analysis and review board, as opposed to an independent legislative branch.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

RECOMMENDATION VOTE

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The following vote shall last for 48 hours or until all the sitting committee members have voted, whichever comes first:

Should the above amendment be passed by the Senate and sent to the Regions for ratification?
[   ] Yes
[   ] No

[Napoleon]

RECOMMENDATION VOTE

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The following vote shall last for 48 hours or until all the sitting committee members have voted, whichever comes first:

Should the above amendment be passed by the Senate and sent to the Regions for ratification?
[   ] Yes
[  x ] No

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

RECOMMENDATION VOTE

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The following vote shall last for 48 hours or until all the sitting committee members have voted, whichever comes first:

Should the above amendment be passed by the Senate and sent to the Regions for ratification?
[   ] Yes
[ X ] No

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The Government Oversight and Reform Committee has voted 2-0 to recommend that the Senate not pass the Streamlining Legislative Introdution Amendment.


Okay Nappy, since I picked the last topic for all intents and purposes, why don't you pick our next one.

[Napoleon]

Okay let me think real quick.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Remember to look throguh list in OP of uncompleted work and then check the queue for any bills not included in the list that are within our jurisdiction. Also any issue or problem within our area of jurisdiction may be considered as well, so as to compose legislation on the matter. The special elections issue and the Committee consolidation are such examples. If you want to do the special elections thing so that you can pursue getting rid of the appointments at the beginning of AT-Large terms that is an option. I know you expressed interest in that before and we basically already have discussed it in thep revious Senate so we could move rather swiftly on it.

[Napoleon]

I'm open to looking into a govrnmentql reorganization but pehaps with two members we should wait. Truth is, he system has Grown very stale.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What do you mean by "reorganization? Are you referring to Nix's departmental thing, or a more fundamental structural change?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Nappy? NAPPY? TALK TO ME DAMN IT!!!

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

I would send messages if I could.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

While I would prefer more clarification, I don't forsee getting it any time soon.

I am thus going to throw open on the disgussion both to members and non members to discuss matters related to fixing the overal structural issues in this game. I think the first thing we need to consider is how to get the dead regions revived.

We need to answer a question that has been dogging us for years, is the lack of activity becuase of a lack of political competition? It is my opinion that it is so. Do you agree? If not, what else is the cause of the Midwest's persistant problems, and not to mention the Pacifics? Was that not the case in the Northeast towards the end of the "era of you know who?".

If we consolidate the regions, how do we design a process that allows the states to be shifted around in a manner that gets everyone's support? Does a package deal that every region votes on work best (Clay style) or splitting it up into several questions (Douglas style). Once that is done, how do we change the Senate in response? Should we consider an insane idea like bicamerialism to address the later issue?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

If we consolidated to three regions and gave each region two Regional Senators, for a total of six that would comprise the Senate. You could then have a five member body of "At-Large" Deputies/Represenatives etc. By seperating the bodies and requiring both to pass legislation, you bypass the primary objections of the Regionalists and no longer have to worry about the numbers of Regional Senators versus At-Large. That would be an increase of a single member on the current numbers, but in exchange you would have two fewer regions and thus fewer officeholders at that level, as well as a more equally divided pie in terms of the political calculus.

Administering it will be a bitch to be sure and need a rewrite of the OSPR, as well as a separate set of procedures for the new body, but that is just some busy work that we can work through if determined to be worth it.

The real problem is determing who gets what states. You can do this two ways. You can splice up the Pacific, which is probably the easiest to do politically but likely more difficult to acheive the desired results (not to mention you would have non-contiguity) or you shift all the boundaries somewhat and put the better "plan" above that of the politics of passing it. It might be a wash in the end politically because a more solid plan would be easier to sell overall.