Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose. So, the answer is no, it was not a solid investment.

> Well, sometimes reading the purpose / preamble in the bill that they voted on gives some insight to the purpose.

Let me guess - you also think that the title also has something to do with the purpose.

I think that both are marketing fluff. I think that because neither one has any substantive effect. Given that, it's unclear why you'd think that they have meaning.

Instead, I think that the purpose is what the substantive provisions would be reasonably expected to accomplish.

The alternative is that comgress-critters are incompetent, and I'm pretty sure that they're not. They're just trying to do something other than what you and I might like, hence the preambles and the titles.

Note that "they're incompetent" isn't doesn't excuse what they do.

> Let me guess - you also think that the title also has something to do with the purpose.

No, I don't believe that, and am kind of insulted you would suggest it. I do believe that some proposed purpose can be gotten from the introductory text in a bill. In some legislation they are incompetent, particularly when finance is concerned. Marketing it is, but even marketing gives an intent.

The actual provisions in a bill are just that, provisions. They don't tell actual intent or purpose for the most part unless they include funding for a study to prove results.

> I do believe that some proposed purpose can be gotten from the introductory text in a bill.

How about some evidence supporting that belief?

Note that said evidence must somehow distinguish the preamble, which you think goes to purpose, from the title, which you think doesn't.

How about public statements by the authors?

> In some legislation they are incompetent, particularly when finance is concerned.

How do you know? More to the point, why does it matter? What will you do differently if they're incompetent vs they're trying to do something other than what the fluff says?

Surely you're not going with "if they knew better, they'd behave differently"? After all, they keep doing the same things, so they've had ample opportunity to learn (and you wouldn't be the first to point out their "mistakes").

> Marketing it is, but even marketing gives an intent.

Marketing is nothing more than an attempt to send a message. Attempting to send the message "I want to cure cancer" does not imply that I actually want to cure cancer.

It is one thing to think everyone has an agenda, but expecting everyone to deceive with every word is really wrong. I knew some of the staffers in the 90's who wrote the bills for a certain senator and they always wrote the intro text to explain what they intended the bill to do. The titles were mush (they would admit that) and sometimes very funky so they could get a good acronym. They believed what they wrote.

I believe the incompetence comes from not actually having run a small business and pulling the levers of the economy in an attempt to fix things. Chaos will damage an economy in pretty short order.

> It is one thing to think everyone has an agenda, but expecting everyone to deceive with every word is really wrong.

That's nice, but irrelevant because I'm not claiming that anyone is trying to "deceive with every word". I'm claiming that they're trying to accomplish what the substantive provisions would reasonably be expected to do and the other stuff is just marketing to get it passed.

> I believe the incompetence comes from not actually having run a small business and pulling the levers of the economy in an attempt to fix things.

I'm not convinced that "having run a small business" is relevant because they're not just hosing small biz. However, it is sort of absurd to expect them to be experts in any of the fields in which they make decisions, let alone all of them.