At ConservaTruth, some of us (especially this author) get asked this question often.
“What bills have you worked on that solve the issues you’re complaining about?”
It’s a reasonable question, and it reveals something important about how people approach problems. Most people assume laws exist to protect rights and ensure fairness, making legislative action their go-to solution for social issues. This perspective sounds noble, but it misses something crucial about how legal systems function in practice.
Laws regulate behavior through restrictions. They tell us what we can do, what we cannot do, and what hoops we must jump through to access certain privileges. Think about your morning routine. The seatbelt law restricts your choice to drive unrestrained. Traffic signals restrict when you can proceed through intersections. Tax codes restrict how much of your income you keep.
Each restriction comes with enforcement. Skip the seatbelt and face a fine. Run the red light and pay a ticket. Avoid taxes and deal with penalties. Laws work because people know consequences follow violations.
The same pattern repeats everywhere. Laws shape behavior through the promise of consequences, and those consequences give the regulations their power.
If more people understood this, they would judge proposed laws by what they would force people to do.
“What bills have you worked on?” Here’s how we answer that.
We have worked on hundreds of bills, but our approach differs completely. We do not review legislation to build support for a political agenda or to help lawmakers gain public favor. Our focus is on carefully examining the full language of a bill to identify where it expands government power and opens the door to unintended consequences.
Our careful analysis reveals a pattern that most people miss. Many so-called legislative “solutions” either fail to address the root issue or end up making it worse. In most cases, the original bill may appear safe, but once it moves through the legislative sausage factory, amendments are added that drastically change its impact.
Bills don’t address the underlying causes of the problems they claim to fix. What they do accomplish, however, is add new restrictions on top of already bad and unconstitutional laws.
It’s like trying to solve traffic problems by installing more lights at an intersection poorly designed to begin with; they don’t fix the flawed layout but instead create more stops, longer backups, and slower traffic overall.
Political organizations across our state typically follow a predictable playbook. Most groups focus their energy on supporting more legislation. That’s why many spend their time acting as de facto legislators, writing bills and handing them to lawmakers along with the thinking that goes with them. Conservative groups do this, too, which reinforces the public perception that laws solve problems. When organizations across the political spectrum embrace the same approach, citizens receive consistent messaging about legislative solutions.
We proudly take a separate path entirely. We focus our efforts on preventing harmful legislation from becoming law, and informing the public drives everything we do.
Informed citizens carry more influence than a dozen well-intentioned bills built on shaky ground. When citizens understand the concerning provisions in a bill, they start questioning its broader effects. That’s when productive dialogue with legislators becomes possible.
Our approach provides an effective solution grounded in prevention. Why? Because we recognize a simple truth about government power. Every new law expands authority somewhere, and expansion rarely reverses.
So, we return to what we should really be asking. Why do we keep begging for another law when previous ones have failed to solve the problem?
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not constitute legal or professional advice. ConservaTruth assumes no liability for any actions taken based on this content. Read more.
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