How a Bill Becomes a Law: Pass It, Find Out What's In It, Then Fix It
Great, snappy Megan McArdle on the idea that Congress should pass a flawed health care bill and then amend it later:
If we pass this thing, no American politician, left or right, is going to cut any of these programs, or raise the broad-based taxes necessary to pay for them, without any compensating goodies to offer the public…until the crisis is almost upon us. I can think of no situation, other than impending crisis, in which such a thing has been done--and usually, as with Social Security, they have done just little enough to kick the problem down the road. The idea that you pass a program of dubious sustainability because you can always make it sustainable later, seems borderline insane. I can't think of a single major entitlement that has become more sustainable over time. Why is this one supposed to be different?
The whole pass-then-fix plan is weirdly reminiscent of presidential adviser David Axelrod's infamous line on ABC's This Week back in January:
"People will never know what's in that bill until we pass it."
It's funny, I don't remember any of this from How a Bill Becomes a Law:
I also must have missed that follow-up Schoolhouse Rock hit, "The Slaughter Rule."
