Project 4444
The US Constitution defines the greatest form of government in the history of the world – and uses only 4,444 words to accomplish its task.
If the foundational definition of an entirely new form of government can be written with only 4,444 words, why should any single law or act of Congress within that government require more?
Project 4444 proposes the adoption of a new procedural rule whereby Congress cannot pass any law that has a wordcount greater than the 4,444 wordcount of the US Constitution.
“Brevity and conciseness are the parents of correction.” – Hosea Ballou**
Limiting new laws to a maximum 4,444 words will encourage authors of bills to write laws that are:
1. Single issue;
2. Expressed briefly and concisely;
3. Expressed efficiently and correctly to their stated purpose;
4. Directly readable in their entirety by any member of Congress in a single
30-minute session;
Bloated, multi-thousand-page documents which are effectively unreadable and grossly inefficient - (because they are authored and reviewed in disparate sections almost exclusively by independent teams of congressional staffers, then assembled from the bottom up rather than from the top down) - will become a thing of the past.
Congress members will never again be told: “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.”
Enacting only Project 4444-compliant laws will compel the US government and elected members of the US Congress to operate more effectively, efficiently, and directly on behalf of US citizens.