Appendix II
Super Congress Proxy Voting is Unconstitutional
Deliberative assemblies in representative democracies have one common characteristic: equality of membership. The elected representatives act as a body to create and deliberate bills that become national law. Not just some of the representatives, all of them take part in this process before a bill becomes law.
When a very few assume the tasks of the many in an assembly, namely the twelve members of the Super Congress committee, the net result is the ceding of deliberative and voting power from the many to the few. That is called proxy voting. It's fine for shareholder meetings but not a representative democracy.
Robert's Rules of Order is clear on proxy voting:
"It is
unknown to a strictly deliberative assembly, and is in conflict with the
idea of the equality of members, which is a fundamental principle of
deliberative assemblies. There can be but little use for debate where
one member has more votes than another, possibly more than all the
others combined." Roberts Rules of Order
You won't find proxy voting allowed anywhere in the Constitution. The authorizing legislation was illegal as is any legislation that may flow from the committee since it entails proxy voting.
But this is how they have to do business. The budget cuts forthcoming will be so painful and unpopular, the legislature, as a whole, is afraid to have roll call votes to make them accountable. They need the cover of a contrived national emergency.
Appendix III
Super Congress Timeline
The Congressional Budget Office told Congress that it needed legislative proposals weeks earlier than the initial schedule above. That will shorten the Super Congress deliberation process significantly. CNN September 13 Didn't the bill authors talk to CBO before they put together this timeline? This is another example of how ridiculous this process is.
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