Reform MY Gov - A Citizen Portal
Democrats and Republicans listen to lobbyists and special interest groups, not to the American people. However, Reform MY Gov is a citizen portal that will crowdsource ideas to our greatest challenges and require legislators to review what their constituents want.
What are some problems with our legislative process today?
In a USA TODAY, Arizona Republic and the Center for Public Integrity report completed a few years ago, investigators found that over 10,000 bills in state legislatures across the country during an 8-year period were EXACT copies of the bills written by special interest groups and lobbyists. Virginia was one of the states leading all others in the nation in passing lobbyist-written legislation.
Over the years, reports have shown similar impacts in Congress. One NY Times report showed the influence of big banks on legislation impacting the finance industry. Of the 85 lines in the bill to restore taxpayer bailouts of banks for their derivatives trading, 70 were written by Citigroup lobbyists. This kind of process happens each year.
You ever wonder HOW a bill that is over 1,000 pages in length is never actually seen by a majority of legislators until the day it is voted on? Or how these kinds of bills get put together so quickly if no one in Congress seems to know what is in them? Well, it is because the person you elected to Congress is not likely involved in the actual writing of the law at all. A small number of lobbyists and political elites are involved. This means the laws and budgets that impact all our lives are not actually meant to help us. Any positive result is pure accidental.
What is the solution? How can we improve our legislative process to reduce corruption from special interest groups?
The solution advocated by ONLY the Reform Party is to create an online crowdsourcing portal called Reform MY Gov. Citizens could login and suggest ideas and solutions to problems that impact them on a local, state and national level.
What makes this system unique is that lobbyists and corporate interests will need to be registered and their bill text will need to be labeled, so the American people can know exactly what clauses are supported by special interest groups and lobbyists.
To add even more strength to this portal, legislators and their staff will each be separately tracked, so voters in their districts will now exactly how much time they are spending viewing solutions and which solutions they are viewing and downloading.
The ending result will be that:
- The people will get to increase their voice by sharing their ideas and supporting the ideas of others that they support.
- Lobbyists and their supported legislation will become well-known to the people.
- Some of the most popular solutions could also have scorecards added - with the Congressional Budget Office and other organizations providing their assessment of cost and feasibility.
- Voters will know if their elected representatives and their staff are actually taking an interest in what the people of their district support.
