Unnecessary Complexity in Laws

Bills/laws should be written in simple and concise language.  Congress should employ a central pool of technical writers who would rewrite all bills submitted to produce the most simple and straight forward language meeting the intent of the bill.  They should produce an executive summary of the bill.  This pool should be managed by an independent (or at least bipartisan) group and maintain honest broker standards.

The legislative process should be open and honest.  We must end the secretive insertion of  earmarks and other special interest provisions by Congressional staff members.  Congressmen cast their vote unaware of such provisions.  To solve this problem, all bills before Congress should be under document configuration control from first draft on.  Standard document configuration management software (currently available) should maintain all versions of the bill and document all changes.  Change documentation should include the specific changes in language, a statement of the intent of the change, date, time, person making the change.  

There should be a delay of at least one day before voting on a bill during which no changes may be made.

The legislative process should be open to the public and the press.  All pending bills should be published on the internet along with the document configuration management data.  This will facilitate and encourage public and press participation in the legislative process.

As new laws are considered, related existing laws should be reviewed and provisions rescinded and replaced with more simple and concise language.