Rider Transparency and Relevance Act

Section 1. Short Title and Finding of Legislative Absurdity

This Act may be cited as the “Rider Transparency and Relevance Act” or the “What Does a Post Office Have to Do with Defense Spending Act of 2026.”

The Senate finds and cannot believe it has to state:

(a) The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 (H.R. 2617) was 4,155 pages long and included provisions on TikTok regulation, healthcare reform, retirement savings (the SECURE Act 2.0), disaster relief, and changes to the Electoral Count Act — all passed as a single up-or-down vote, because that is how Congress prefers to handle unrelated topics: all at once, at the last possible moment, under maximum pressure.

(b) The same omnibus contained more than 3,000 earmarks totaling billions of dollars, many of which were inserted into the bill in the final hours before the vote, when the probability of any member reading 4,155 pages was exactly zero.

(c) Forty-eight states have single-subject rules in their state constitutions, requiring that each bill address only one topic. Congress has no such rule. The two states without single-subject rules are Arkansas and North Carolina, and even they have germaneness requirements in practice.

(d) The House germaneness rule (House Rule XVI, clause 7) requires amendments to be germane — related — to the bill they seek to amend. The Senate has no equivalent rule, which is why a defense spending bill in the Senate may include provisions about dairy farming, cryptocurrency, and the naming of federal buildings.

(e) Must-pass legislation — including continuing resolutions, debt ceiling increases, and annual appropriations — is routinely loaded with unrelated provisions because members know these bills cannot be allowed to fail. This practice, known informally as “Christmas tree legislation,” allows individual senators to attach personal legislative priorities to bills that have nothing to do with them, secure in the knowledge that a vote against the ornament is a vote against the tree.

Section 2. The Single Subject Requirement

2(a). General Rule

Each bill introduced in either chamber of Congress shall address a single subject, which shall be clearly expressed in the bill’s title. This is the law in 48 states and should not be a controversial proposition.

2(b). Determination of Subject

The subject of a bill shall be determined by:

1. The bill’s title
2. The stated purpose in the bill’s preamble
3. Common sense, which the committee acknowledges is in short supply

2(c). Challenge Procedure

Any member may raise a point of order that a bill or amendment violates the Single Subject Requirement. The presiding officer shall rule on the challenge, and the ruling shall not be subject to tabling, because tabling points of order is how the Senate avoids dealing with problems.

Section 3. The Relevance Test

3(a). Germaneness Standard

All amendments offered to a bill in either chamber shall be germane to the bill’s stated subject. For the Senate, this represents a new requirement. For the House, this represents enforcing an existing requirement that is routinely waived.

3(b). Relevance Criteria

An amendment shall be considered germane if a reasonable person — not a legislative counsel, not a parliamentarian, but a reasonable person — would agree that it is related to the subject of the bill it seeks to amend.

3(c). Examples of Non-Germane Amendments (Drawn from Actual History)

The following are examples of real amendments that would not survive this test:

• Attaching TikTok regulation to a government funding bill
• Inserting retirement savings reform (SECURE Act 2.0) into an omnibus spending bill
• Declaring pizza a vegetable via a rider in an agriculture appropriations bill (the rider mandated that tomato paste on pizza counted as a vegetable serving in school lunches)
• Post office namings attached to defense authorization bills

Section 4. The “Christmas Tree” Decoration Limit

4(a). Ornament Cap

Must-pass legislation — defined as continuing resolutions, debt ceiling increases, and annual appropriations — shall be limited to a maximum of three non-germane provisions, colloquially known as “ornaments.”

4(b). Ornament Disclosure

Each non-germane provision must be accompanied by a Rider Impact Statement filed with the Congressional Budget Office, explaining:

1. What the provision does
2. What it costs
3. Why it could not be passed as standalone legislation (the honest answer to which is almost always “because it would not pass on its own merits”)
4. Who requested its inclusion

4(c). The Three-Ornament Exception

The committee acknowledges that three ornaments is still three more than a single-subject rule would allow, but views it as a pragmatic concession to a legislative body that would otherwise refuse to pass the bill. Compromise is, after all, a congressional tradition — when it involves spending money.

Section 5. The Omnibus Unbundling Clause

5(a). Separate Votes Required

Any appropriations bill exceeding 1,000 pages shall be divided into its component divisions, each of which shall receive a separate recorded vote. Members shall no longer be able to claim they “had to vote for the whole thing” to justify voting for the parts they publicly oppose.

5(b). Table of Contents

All bills exceeding 500 pages shall include a plain-language table of contents on the first page, written at a reading level that does not require a law degree. The table of contents shall include:

1. A description of each major division
2. The estimated cost of each division
3. The page numbers on which each division begins
4. Estimated reading time at average adult reading speed (250 words per minute)

5(c). Page Count Disclosure

The total page count shall be displayed prominently on the first page of every bill, in a font no smaller than the bill number itself, so that voters may appreciate the scope of what their representatives are being asked to read and vote on within 48 hours.

Section 6. Effective Date and the Irony of This Bill’s Fate

This Act shall take effect upon enactment, which the sponsor acknowledges is unlikely, given that it was drafted as a clean, single-subject bill and was therefore immediately targeted for 47 unrelated amendments, demonstrating in real time the problem it sought to solve.

Committee Note: During the Senate debate on this bill, 47 unrelated amendments were proposed, including one renaming a post office in Tallahassee, Florida, one establishing National Beekeeping Awareness Month, and one authorizing a study on the feasibility of a bridge connecting two islands in Alaska with a combined population of 50 — a provision the sponsor recognized from a different bill already on the site. The sponsor moved to table all 47 amendments. The motion failed 34-66. The sponsor then noted for the Record that the bill about preventing unrelated riders had just had 47 unrelated riders proposed to it, which she described as “the most expensive I-told-you-so in legislative history.”

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This bill failed 34-66. In the weeks following its defeat, the Senate passed the annual National Defense Authorization Act, which included 14 provisions unrelated to defense, including a ban on the importation of certain decorative fish, a tax credit for small distilleries, and the naming of three post offices. The bill’s sponsor issued a press release consisting solely of the word “See?” which was entered into the Congressional Record and subsequently revised and extended by two senators who added remarks about the importance of decorative fish.