Comment by dathanb82
8 hours ago
That’s like saying that the code in a repo belongs to the whole team once a PR is merged, so it doesn’t make sense to track its provenance back to its original authors.
8 hours ago
That’s like saying that the code in a repo belongs to the whole team once a PR is merged, so it doesn’t make sense to track its provenance back to its original authors.
> so it doesn’t make sense to track its provenance back to its original authors
The legislative process is inherently collaborative in a way that's ordinarily undocumented. Who introduced an amendment and who supported it are entirely separate. Someone who introduced language can wind up not supporting it because of where the mix of trade-offs winds up.
At the level of a bill, knowing who wrote language matters. At the level of law, you should only care who voted for it. (I'm not even tackling the inherent subjectivity in tracing e.g. language in the CFR to specific language in a bill.)
> you should only care who voted for it
even then you have three-line whips and numerous reasons to vote for / against things that are wrapped up in party politics and other stupid games
once something is passed; the intent of the writer, the intent of those that voted for it and the meaning of the words in the final legislation can all be wildly different.