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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/25/upshot/how-to-avoid-the-sex-trafficking-bills-surprise.html?abt=0002&abg=0

How to Avoid the Sex-Trafficking Bills Surprise


Derek Willis

A once-popular bill to help victims of sex trafficking was derailed in the Senate recently when Democrats
discovered that language restricting funding for abortions was in the bill sneaked in, they charged, by
Republicans.
If Democrats truly were shocked to find it in the bill (theres evidence that wasnt the case), they shouldnt have
been. Its an easy problem to fix.
There are ways to avoid a legislative surprise, like better education and training of congressional staffers or
careful consideration of bills by committees. Theres another one: Treat each bill as if it were a page on the web,
with links to all of the laws and regulations it affects.
Sound far-fetched? It isnt. The way most congressional legislation is drafted (using computers) makes it possible
to add markup like citations to laws to the text of bills. That ability has been in place since 2001. What
happened to the sex-trafficking bill, which would create a fund for victims, is an example of how marking up
legislation like web pages (and then publishing them) would be useful.
Photo

Representative Fontaine Maury Maverick of Texas in 1937 or 1938. He introduced his bill by
dropping it in a hopper provided for that purpose. Credit Harris & Ewing
Gone are the days when lawmakers would draft bills by hand and then drop them into the hopper on the floor of
the House or Senate. Bills are written electronically, published electronically and (usually) amended electronically.
Official government sites display bills as they would look when printed, which preserves a consistent appearance
but sacrifices the advantages of the Internet. But adding the equivalent of links and other references what is
called semantic information could make it easy to see what parts of law a bill refers to or affects.
While members of Congress tweet and post to Instagram, and while congressional committees post animated
GIFs to make a point about immigration policy, the less glamorous process of publishing legislation has made

some improvements. Reading bills is much the same activity as it was during Schoolhouse Rock days, except
now you can use a computer or tablet.
The sex-trafficking bills offending language isnt exactly transparent; it doesnt mention abortion at all. It says, if
you can parse the legalese: Amounts in the [Domestic Trafficking Victims] Fund, or otherwise transferred from
the Fund, shall be subject to the limitations on the use or expending of amounts described in sections 506 and 507
of division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2014 (Public Law 113-76; 128 Stat. 409) to the same extent
as if amounts in the Fund were funds appropriated under division H of such Act.
The limitations referred to in the bill say that money cant be spent for any abortion except in cases of incest or
rape or for health benefits coverage that includes coverage of abortion. But in order to know that, a reader of the
bill would have to know what was in part of the law passed in January 2014 or know what search keywords to use
in those sections (Congress.gov, which publishes legislation, has a way to view bills that does contain links to
entire laws or the U.S. code, but not to specific sections). The abortion restrictions, which are commonly known as
the Hyde amendment after Henry Hyde, a former Illinois Republican congressman who opposed abortion, are a
regular feature in Republican-authored spending bills.
Theres already an effort to modernize most congressional legislation drafting, but it isnt coming from inside
government. The Cato Institute, the libertarian-leaning research and policy organization, created the Deepbills
Project, which takes legislation published by Congress and adds references, including to existing laws and
government organizations like federal agencies and congressional committees. These arent URLs, but definitive
references to institutions and individuals that could then be used to generate web links. Deepbills provides
identifiers rather than links because web URLs can be brittle.
Because the Cato project involves adding references to bills after they have been published, they arent as useful.
It can take a lot of time to work through the thousands of bills that are written in every session. Making it a part of
the official legislative drafting process, when the legal staff would already have the semantic information needed,
could help staffers, lobbyists, citizens and, yes, members of Congress figure out what specific language means
and what it refers to. It might just help avoid the surprise that left a bill with bipartisan support foundering.

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