In Washington today, we are seeing another crisis prompting a bum’s rush.  With today’s debt limit “deal”, we are seeing yet another large bill that few people have even read, and fewer still fully understand.  The voters have not seen it.  The committee hearings and normal legislative deliberation has been entirely absent.  I would bet that many legislators have not even read it.

Instead, we have a “crisis”, and a mad rush to get this large, complex, and largely unexamined bill through congress immediately to meet an artificial deadline.

We got that with TARP.  We got that with the “stimulus”.  We got it with the “health care” legislation, and now we are getting it with the debt limit.  In Minnesota recently, we got it with the “deficit deal”

There is no excuse for this.  Legislation is serious business with serious consequences.  We have a complex and difficult legislative process because our founding fathers wanted to protect us from the sort of tyranny that arises when  a charismatic or ambitious leader sees opportunity to “save us” from a “crisis”.

It is time for legislators to legislate, not play superman.  It is time for them to take responsibility for their choices, and stop pushing their decisions off onto unelected bureaucrats or “commissions”.  It is time for voters to hold their representatives accountable and insist that they make those choices and take that responsibility and not dodge their responsibility.