Simply speaking

LITTLE ROCK — CONGRATULATIONS to Bruce Braley, a congressman from up in Iowa. The honorable is sponsoring legislation to make government documents more readable. It's about time. (If he'd only sponsor a bill to help editorial writers' prose, too.) Representative Braley calls his long-awaited mandate-steel yourself-the Plain Language in Government Communications Act. The title is strike one against the bill. But surely the gentleman's motives are good. We long ago came to the realization that writers of governmentese write to be legal, not understood. Sorta like lawyers.

But is Congress the outfit best suited to reform language? We can just see the final product:

Section 1. Providing for the consideration of the Senate amendment to the bill. Concurrent resolution by the United States Congress, dated vote of same, in triplicate to all interested parties.

(a) Declaration-The Congress determines and declares that the wording, phrases, phraseology, definition and general syntax and semantics of government questionary to be toilsome for layperson(s) to understand.

(b) Table of Contents

TITLE 1

Section 101. Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to take from the Speaker's table the bill making use of government forms by layperson(s) easier to comprehend by said layperson(s). Representative Bruce Braley introduces such bill henceforth referred to as the Plain Language in Government Communications Act (HR 3548), which would require employees of the federal government, including but not limited to the IRS, the Department of Education and the Veterans Administration, to use word forms in uncomplex and undissembling language.

Section 2.

If both portions of the question specified in the first section of the resolution are adopted, the action of the House should, um, . . . during consideration of the motion . . . to concur something or 'nuther . . . notwithstanding the operation of the previous question . . . .

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We don't doubt Congress can pass a law regulating language. It's how it does it that gives us the bots. Judging from its past performance, it'll use language not to convey meaning, but obfuscate it or, if really successful, disguise it. Reams of clintonesque prose, with wily escape hatches and tricky reservations all in place, are in the offing. We can hardly wait.