Editorial: Voting with eyes open

Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2007 | 7:12 a.m.

It is well known that many congressional bills containing dozens, hundreds or even thousands of pages are often churned out in the hours or sometimes minutes before they are voted upon.

The Newhouse News Service reported that many Democratic candidates for the House, including Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., made that an issue as they campaigned during last year's election season. They charged that under Republican leadership, many voluminous bills were presented to rank-and-file members for a vote with virtually no notice.

Obviously, this is an outrageous practice and the news service gave an example of how damaging it can be. The office of U.S. inspector general in Iraq - the office that tries to account for the billions in U.S. aid that has been sent there - was eliminated in a defense spending bill that passed in September. That angered many legislators who had cast affirmative votes.

To rectify the problem, Baird has proposed that the House leadership post all bills in full on the Internet three days before a vote is taken. He also proposed that for this rule to ever be waived for certain votes, the House would have to approve the waiver by a two-thirds majority.

Baird told the news service that he is confident that the rule involving the waiver would pass, but that the new Democratic leadership would likely change the 72 hours notice to 24 hours.

Even with that change, though, the rule would be a major improvement over what exists now. We support Baird on this rule change. It would be a way of curtailing the power of leaders who see slipping pet amendments into legislation at the last second as a time-honored tradition.