Single-Subject Rule Amendment | Common Sense for America Party

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Here's how Washington actually makes law: a thousand-page bill drops the night before a vote, stuffed with provisions that have nothing to do with each other and nothing to do with the bill's title. Unpopular measures ride to passage buried inside must-pass funding bills. Nobody reads it, nobody can, and that's the point.

A single-subject rule ends that game. Every bill has to stick to one subject, and the title has to say what it is. Forty-three states already put some version of this in their own constitutions—the federal government is the outlier. We've drafted the federal version, written to kill smuggled riders without tying Congress in knots. This is one of the constitutional amendments we're publishing on its own, so you can take up whichever matters most to you.

What the Amendment Does

A clean-bill rule, written to be both real and workable.

One subject, honestly titled. Every bill sticks to a single subject, and the title has to say what that subject is—no more burying unrelated things inside a bill whose title hides them.
Strike the rider, keep the bill. An unrelated provision has no force, but striking it doesn't kill the rest of the law. This is deliberate: one bad rider shouldn't blow up an entire funding bill and cause the very chaos we're trying to prevent.
A workable rule for spending bills. A general appropriations bill can fund many departments at once—that's its nature—but it can't be used to smuggle in changes to general law. Substantive policy has to pass as its own bill, in the open.
Someone can actually enforce it. Any member of Congress, and anyone harmed by a smuggled provision, can ask a court to strike it—so the rule isn't just a suggestion Congress waives whenever convenient.
A deferential standard, on purpose. Courts uphold a bill as long as its parts are germane to—reasonably connected with—its titled subject, and strike a provision only where the disconnect is clear and manifest. It stops the smuggled riders without letting judges second-guess every ordinary bill.

What the States Already Do

This isn't a novel experiment. Forty-three states require single-subject bills in their own constitutions—41 apply it to all legislation, and a couple apply it specifically to appropriations. The federal Constitution has no such rule at all, which is why Congress can bundle anything with anything. We deliberately borrowed the deferential "germane / reasonably connected" standard that has worked at the state level for over a century, rather than a strict test that would flood the courts and stall governing. The middle-path appropriations rule is drawn from the same state experience: let a spending bill fund many agencies, but don't let it become a vehicle for unrelated policy.

The Honest Trade-offs

We try to be straight about the downsides of everything we propose. The real ones here:

Some horse-trading is how deals actually get done. A rule that was too strict could gum up ordinary governing. That's exactly why the standard is deferential and appropriations get a tailored carve-out—we're targeting the abuse, not normal lawmaking.
Courts get a role they don't have today. That's a real change, which is why we bounded it with the "clear and manifest" test—judges strike only the obvious smuggled rider, not close calls.
It works best alongside the other reforms. A single-subject rule pairs naturally with the line-item veto and term limits—together they cut the insider leverage that thrives in the dark.

This is a discussion draft prepared for review by legislative counsel and for presentation to Members of Congress—proposed constitutional text, not final legislative language. The wording will keep tightening as it moves forward.

Download the Documents

Read the full text, share it, and—most importantly—send it to your Representative. All three are formatted Word documents you can print or attach to an email.

One-Page Summary
The quick version—the whole idea at a glance. Great for sharing. Plain-Language Explainer & Advocacy Guide
What it does, what the states already do, the honest trade-offs, and how to help. Full Proposed Amendment Text
The complete section-by-section constitutional language.

Step 1: Find Your Representative

An amendment has to be proposed by Congress before any state can ratify it, so the people to contact are your U.S. Representative and your two U.S. Senators. Not sure who they are?

Find Your U.S. Representative → Find Your U.S. Senators →

A short, specific message from a constituent carries real weight—far more than a mass-produced form letter. Personal calls to a district office count even more.

Step 2: Send a Message

Here's a letter you can use as a starting point. Make it your own—add a sentence about a bill you watched pass with something ugly buried inside it. Fill in the bracketed pieces, then paste it into your Representative's contact form or print and mail it.

Dear [Representative / Senator] [Last Name],

As your constituent in [City/Town, State], I am writing to ask you to support—and to help introduce—a constitutional amendment requiring that every bill Congress passes address a single subject, clearly stated in its title, with no unrelated riders.

Too many laws pass only because unrelated provisions are buried inside must-pass bills that no one has time to read. Forty-three states already require single-subject bills in their own constitutions; the federal government should hold itself to the same standard.

The proposal I support is careful and workable: it strikes an unrelated rider without killing the rest of the bill, keeps a sensible rule for appropriations, and uses a deferential legal standard so it stops smuggled provisions without tying Congress in knots.

Full text and a plain-language explainer are available at commonsenseforamerica.org/single-subject-rule. I would welcome the chance to know where you stand, and I hope you will consider introducing or co-sponsoring such an amendment.

Thank you for your time and your service.

Sincerely,
[Your Name]
[Your Street Address]
[City, State ZIP]
[Email / Phone]

Consider attaching the one-page summary or the full text (above) so your Representative's office has the actual language in hand.

★ Why This One Should Be Easy to Rally Behind

Almost nobody will stand up and defend hiding unrelated measures inside must-pass bills—it's an insider trick, not a principle. A single-subject rule makes lawmaking more honest and more readable, and it doesn't favor either party. It simply says: if a measure can't pass on its own merits, in the open, it shouldn't ride to passage strapped to something else.

Forty-three states already live by a rule like this. Asking the federal government to hold itself to the same standard its own states meet is about as common-sense as reform gets—and it's the kind of structural fix that makes every other reform harder to quietly undo.

The statutory cousin: our 72-Hour Rule bill would require every bill's final text to be public for 72 hours before a final vote—something Congress could pass right now.

The Single-Subject Rule