[Congress] Government Programs in the Lawbook
UNL Congress
Greetings, citizens of Netherlands,
This month, all non private debates will be done here in this newspaper. You can use the comments to join.
Topic: Government Programs in the Lawbook
Requester: ElGorro
Text:
The current Government Programs Lawbook is divided in two sections. First some general rules and second the Active Government Programs. I believe Active Government Programs should not be set as Law in the Lawbook.
Proposal is to move mostly of the general rules as section to the Government Lawbook and remove the Active Government Programs from the Lawbook. By Law, the Government is required to promote all active Government Programs at least once a month. That way the community is directly informed on what kind of Active Goverment Programs are available and still the Goverment can decide every month on how they want to spend budget.
Proposed text as article of Lawbook III:
Article 5 - Government Programs
1. The Government of the eNetherlands is required to allocate at least half of its regular budget on in-game initiatives that aid eDutch citizens in the form of Government Programs.
2. Active Government Programs require to be promoted at least once a month in the form of an in-game article.
3. All subsidies and rewards handed out by Government Programs need to be recorded in appropriate Ministry Sheets.
That way, the government is still required to spend at least 50% of budget to any form of programs, but is flexible on what kind of programs they want to spend.
The current Government Program Law can be found here: https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/-enl-lawbook-chapter-v-government-programs-appendix1-2691881/1/20
Debate is closed after voting on this proposal:
Do you agree on moving the Government Programs to the Government Lawbook and the Active Government Programs to the Appendix section?
The proposal was accepted with these votes:
Yes: 8
DaanHQ (VN)
ElGorro (ReL)
europecrisseswar (ReL)
MDSanderon (ReL)
NoTie112 (Rel)
Starac202 (DemNL)
Weekstrom (VN)
Zeeuwsmeisje (GPN)
No: 6
blackpatje (I&W)
Dirk.Benedict (I&W)
djirtsdew (DemNL)
Jacen.Solo (I&W)
odan (I&W)
Ryan.Rodney.Reynolds (I&W)
Neutral: 10
Arcanic Mindje (DemNL)
BangIades (GPN)
Driekske (DemNL)
eRepTrader (VN)
JackTrout (DemNL)
Janty F (I&W)
Jordic69 (DemNL)
MaartenW (ReL)
nutty fox (DemNL)
Tim Veltkamp (I&W)
ElGorro
Chairman of Congress
Comments
Those Government Programs are not "Law" but an addition to it that can be freely edited and serves for clearity only. So it being there is neither good or bad, nor does it complicate anything - and only serves to have Governments be transparent in their spending schemes.
They are in the Lawbook at the moment. We need to store them somewhere else.
Oh yes, position does not matter much 😉 But the intention behind that piece of text is illustrative and not adding another layer of lawified "rules", just wanted to point that out as one of the authors 😃
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In that light you could perhaps move it to the so-called ''Appendix'' of the Law Book, that is mostly random stuff that is not really organic / systematic to understand how our Country works. The ''Article 1 - Government Programs'' can then be merged with the ''Book III - Government'', making ''Book V - Government Programs'' abundant. One less sub-division of the Law Book!
That would make it more clear indeed
Well, I guess I will need to present my good plans in this area simultaneously with Congress making their incursions into the "Governmental program" area.
I will only say this: The flexibility is already there, written in the Law. Ultimately, this change would do very little, except CoC would lose any responsibility, and Programs could become less transparent for Congress.
I don't even like having a monetary figure in the law, i believe each gov should be free to do what it wants as long as it was clear in the election program, but whatever.
Some candidates do not even bother writing election programs (Tim Veltkamp as the most recent example), so that does not really work. And I prefer governments to be legally obliged to do SOMETHING, instead of having the easy option to do NOTHING., like some former gov. members did back in 2018.
I guess some people are more pro-de-regulation than others
Not writing election program or doing nothing while being CP does not equal being pro-de-regulation - it means you simply do not care enough about your job, and you should therefore not be president.
Plus, I do not consider government programs as some "regulation evil". Otherwise I would not be promoting them 🙂 .
Well, if people vote for you, I do not know why you say that person should not be president, people clearly wanted him to be it. But anyway, this is getting of topic, so whatever.
Well, if this country ever decides to go back to inactivity and death, it is always free to vote for it - the candidates are there, courtesy of Iron and Wine 🙂 . I just prefer to have active governments, and I do not consider inactive or 2-clicking presidents as legitimate, especially after what I have observed here during the past months. This country can do better and deserves better than electing inactive leaders and I know it. That is all.
Sorry, if we disagree on that.
I'd be glad that we have this ''regulation'', as unlike other countries we have a sound financial / budgeting system that ensures we can counterbalance our small size somewhat 😛 . Not to mention that even in that context there is really not a lot of regulation at all. Don't spend more than is earned in a month, and Government are essentially 100% free in what to spend their budget on (and can be - very - creative in where the budget comes from, e.g. MM or surpluses from other months).
I am not against budget laws (as a principle, i dont know the specifics of ours, but overall i like it). Im against people being forced to spend 50% of what used to be spent in the programs previous presidents have created.
@jordic: In principle they could immediately introduce their own radically different programs at the start of their term and spend 50% of the budget on those, instead of on their predecessors' programs.
And the 50% figure is also in the current law, only it is linked precisely to those programs mentioned in the law, which are the previous governments'...
Actually I think I prefer this sort of continuity. I don't feel that each new gov should just be able to radically change the government programs. If the CP candidate runs with such changes in his program, he should be allowed to change the gov programs, but otherwise, if he comes with such changes out of the blue, I feel congress should be able to stop him prior to such changes coming into effect...
On the one hand, writing these programs in the lawbook seems a bit weird, but in this light I will still vote against these changes. I know the damage our RL Dutch governments have done by changing subsidies on renewable energy every few years, and I feel that anything we can do to avoid too sudden changes in subsidies and government programs should not be removed because it looks cleaner...
I like that the active programs are listed. Scrapping of programs and starting new ones should be done after congress debate (and approval), to avoid mis-use of those funds as much as possible.
So, when you are elected as President, you are forced to do what other Presidents and Congress decided for you. When you move the Programs from the Lawbook to somewhere else, it becomes easier for future governments to make their own plans.
The only thing important in the Lawbook to keep is to use half of budget for Programs and that it is administered properly.
What stops CP from running for office with the program change? once elected it should not be a problem to have the program change approved by congress. Just have something in the books to avoid having CP to start a special 'CP Future Pension Program' 😛
Try to get something changed within the month. 😉
Can I apply for that 'CP Future Pension' thing? Seems like something I will be interested in after the end of March 😇 .
So do ee want this in chapter III or keep it in the appendix/Chapter V?
I believe this is just moving laws around. With being flexible on what program it wants to spent it on you are referring to not having to have congress vote on the discontinuation of a program? I'm in favour of not having congress decide which programs can be run during a term. This is a government decision from my point of view. Just as long as 50% of the budget is allocated to the programs that are being used it should be fine.
If you want that, we should remove the programs from the Lawbook and store it somewhere in a government page.
I believe as NoTie112 mentionned the actual programs were meant to be added as appendix for referencing purposes only.
The three proposed laws are fine. All other gov program things can be added to the appendix.. as long as we have thos three laws in place it is quite clear what needs to be done by the government.
Ok, Ill prepare a vote for that.
Vote is up