A nice “honest government” Christmas present

John Rubino
Dec 25, 2024

Last week’s battle over a continuing resolution (CR) to fund the US government into 2025 got a lot of press coverage, much of it unfavorable. But one aspect of the saga was both underreported and, well, revolutionary.

Normally, Congress waits until the government is on the verge of shutting down before releasing a thousand+ page monstrosity of a spending bill that no one reads but everyone has to vote for if they want to go on vacation. The result: massively wasteful spending with zero accountability.

This time around, Congress loaded every conceivable cut of pork into a bill to keep the government running through the transition, safe in the expectation that it would pass like all its predecessors.

But they’d overlooked the fact that today’s AIs can summarize a 1,500-page legalese pork fest into just a few bullet points, allowing the whole world to read a bill that no one would have previously. Armed with a clear view of what Congress was trying to pull, legislators and reporters who would previously have been steamrolled were able to force passage of a less corrupt and vastly more understandable spending bill.

AI, in other words, shined a light on the everyday corruption of American politics and sent the cockroaches scurrying back into the woodwork.

I’m posting this on Christmas morning because it’s a gift for honest-government advocates everywhere.

MORE HERE

https://rubino.substack.com/p/artificial-intelligence-just-revolutionized?r=oy50p&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true