In Part One of this interview, Mr. LeBaron provided background on his own classic American and Hollywood success stories, and why he started the Honor In Office campaign. Today, Mr. LeBaron tells us what Honor In Office is all about, and why real reform is so badly needed in Sacramento.
Q: Can you describe for me, specifically, what Honor In Office is all about?
JERROL: If you look at the header at the Honor In Office homepage you will see the phrase, “There was a time in this country when our leaders’ signatures meant more.” Be it the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or bills passed by Congress to conduct the People’s business, our Founding Fathers and early members of Congress drafted, read in full, debated at length, and either passed or rejected whatever legislation was before the Congress.
Today, elected representatives in Congress and our state legislatures routinely vote on and pass massive draconian bills that no lawmaker has read or fully understands. If you saw the “musical votes” video I’ve linked at my website, sometimes they don’t vote at all. Who among us would trust or hire lawyers who routinely sign off on massive legally binding contracts without even having read them first? That is a serious dereliction of duty on the part of lawmakers, whom we elect and entrust to represent our interests.
The first step in that reform process regarding Honor In Office is the placement of the Honor In Office Act on the California ballot. In essence, the Honor In Office Act would compel every California lawmaker to legally affirm in writing that they have read and understand a bill in full before voting on its passage. A lawmaker’s vote in favor of a bill would not be counted without this confirmation.
This is standard procedure for every American citizen who enters into a legally binding agreement for a bank loan, a mortgage, even something as simple as a cellphone service contract: read, then sign. Upon signing, we are then held legally accountable to the terms of that contract. Given the major social, political, financial, regulatory and even Constitutional ramifications of binding legislation that affects us all, should we expect any less from our duly elected lawmakers?
Q: How can lawmakers be expected to read every bill, especially when some are so huge?
JERROL: They aren’t expected to read every bill. Aides are supposed to read them first to find entries the legislator fundamentally disagrees with. Once found, the legislator can communicate the various problems with the bill and wait for those to be resolved. If major sticking points remain, there is no point in reading the bill. However, for any bill a legislator plans on voting to pass, he or she must read the final version in its entirety, then legally affirm that they did in fact read the entire bill.
This helps to make sure the bill is as good as it can be. It helps to ensure pork hasn’t been inserted. It forces common sense into the equation. After all, how can anyone competently debate the validity of a bill if it hasn’t been read? In effect, just by 400 legislators reading a bill, any number of them will come up with the same comment: “This doesn’t make sense.” That can’t help but happen, and it brings the quality of the legislation way up. To further emphasize the point, I recently received an email from one of our California legislators, which read, “We do pass a lot of silly laws.” Excuse me?
Q: Still, that’s a lot of bills and pages to read, wouldn’t you agree?
JERROL: The legislature sets its own rules. This is very important to understand. They set their own guidelines and procedures. They have the power to change them at will. It is a very sad state of affairs that our legislators are either so corrupt or so dense that they can’t change their rules and procedures to allow them the time to do proper due diligence. That’s far more important than press conferences or meeting with special interest groups.
Q: You mentioned a $350B bill used to pay off only $272B. Could you describe the details of that bill?
JERROL: This has to do with TARP, the $700B Bush bailout bill, where 442 pages were written and passed into law in a little over a week. Based upon the response our two California US Senators received, 94% of Californians opposed it. Yet both the House and Senate passed it. So not only did they not read the bill, they didn’t even listen to their constituents.
In short, that $350B was used to purchase $272B worth of stock. In the blink of an eye, the American people lost $78B. That is according to Elizabeth Warren, the Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP. You can watch both parts of her interview on Jon Stewart’s Daily Show. As I am sure you’ve heard in the news, all sorts of things were added to that bailout bill that had absolutely nothing to do with bailing out or saving the economy, and everything to do with scratching backs.
Q: Speaking of scratching backs, you talked about the trading of votes on the House floor, i.e. legislative back-scratching. Many might consider those normal political tradeoffs that happen in politics all the time. That doesn’t make it right, but are you saying lawmakers should be legally compelled to vote their conscience? Or at least what’s in the best interests of their constituents?
JERROL: That is exactly what I am saying. Yet this kind of bartering happens all the time at both the state and federal level. It is illegal to do this in California, but our lawmakers are very shrewd about how this is done to avoid getting caught. A bill should be able to stand on its merits alone. Lawmakers who would vote in favor of funding or a law because someone else voted in favor of his or her pet project are lawmakers who are looking out for themselves, not the citizens they were elected to represent.
In Part Three of this interview, Mr. Lebaron will address what he sees as the cures for these legislative ills as embodied in his proposed Honor In Office Act, which he seeks to place on the California ballot.
To be continued tomorrow with Part III of the interview with Jerrol LeBaron…
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