How was the bill "amended" to include this crap

[Peter Harris]

Fortunately, I suck at cards, so if poker dries up i'm still socialised enough to work. However, my fiancee and I were curious about american law.

How can one bill related to port security have something totally extraneous added to it?? Is this the done thing in other countries (for example, my country, the UK)? What are the benefits of being allowed to do this?

It seems totally retarded to me, I was hoping someone could explain why and WHY it can be done.

[el_dusto]

attaching "riders" (unrelated items) is standard. it happens most often with appropriations and budget bills; congressmen and senators write in extra funding for projects in their home states. it's how they get re-elected. if there are too many or hugely objectionable ones, the entire bill is defeated and behind-the-scenes negotiation gets the rider author to change his mind so the bill will eventually pass.

it's a standard technique for making sure that something that wouldn't pass on its own will pass. a slap in the face to democracy, but you know, whatever. name a better system. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[furyshade]

it's simple, american law makes it very very easy for someone with enough political sway to attach arbitrary ammendments to popular bills, if they have even the most vague justification, such as justifying this by saying terrorists can use online poker sites to launder money into the U.S, its absolute bs, but its enough for our legal system to allow the ammendment

[mlagoo]

its been done for years, its called pork-barreling or a million other names.

if you support it, its done to make congress more efficient so that they can take care of a lot of little bills with one big bill, and without having to bother the us congress to pass an individual bill on whether to appropriate $20million for the renovation of a museum in wisconsin.

if you don't support it (most people), it's done so that politicians can score brownie points with their constituents or lobbyists with pull over them by avoiding the democratic process and attaching worthless legislation (to the majority of the country) to legislation that must pass, for one reason or another (be it a "security" bill in this case, or an appropriations bill in another case, or whatever).