The economy and usability fail each other... again.

In this story from CNN about the economic stimulus bill, there is a quote from a Republican which has a lot of validity to it:

Some representatives expressed frustration over how little time they had to read the 1,000-plus page bill.

"You can't be serious. This would be humorous if it wasn't so sad," said Rep. Tom Price, R-Georgia. "What's in it? Have you read it?"

I blogged before about how usability could improve the mortgage process, and I think it could stand to do a lot to improve how bills are handled as well. No doubt the fine print of bills are necessary, but, at some point you have to be realistic. No one has time to read 1,000 page bills. It would take, probably quite literally, a few days straight of reading to get through it, let alone fully digest and understand it.

And furthermore, it reduces transparency -- we do operate in a representative government where we don't expect average citizens to have the time (or inclination) to know everything about every bill, law, and regulation -- but sometimes it would be nice to know exactly what our reps are doing.

So why not have a straight up bulleted list up front of all the items contained within? It could look as simple as this, or even break down each section a little further:

• $12 billion for street repairs (p. 193-195)
• $27 billion for environmentally friendly fuels (p. 344-350)
• $19 billion for school construction (p. 507-524)
• And so on...

Of course, that may oversimplify things, but if you're fairly certain you're on board with street repairs, but not so sure about environmentally friendly fuels, you can focus on reading the fuels section.

This isn't about being too lazy to read, it's about realistically improving the decision-making process. Big long documents shouldn't be impressive -- clearly written and easy-to-understand documents should. If you have to have the former, the least you can do is provide the option of the latter.

(Note: I'm not making any commentary on whether or not I agree with the Republicans' stance on the stimulus bill, but I am more than willing to highlight a valid point!)