Portmanteau is an interesting word.

I’ve become familiar with a number of meanings and usages.

Originally, the word came from Middle French “porter” (to carry) and “manteau” (a coat or cover), and formerly referred to a large travelling bag or suitcase with two compartments. Kind of a “carry-all” luggage piece.

Lewis Carroll coined a more contemporary application of the word in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871). In the book, Humpty Dumpty explains to Alice words from Jabberwocky, saying, “Well, slithy means lithe and slimy … You see it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.”

“Portmanteau word” was the original phrase used to describe such words (as listed in dictionaries published as late as the early 1990s), but this has since been abbreviated to simply “portmanteau” as the term (and the type of words it describes) gained popularity.

Since then, I’ve seen it used to describe troubleshooting “missions” from a home office to satellite offices, where the primary purpose of the visit was to “stabilize the accounting department” and other department heads, hearing that there was a team briefing up to fly out to the Western office, would stack their requests on top of the original mission, resulting in a “portmanteau” venture, doomed to failure because it now could no longer just focus on the original task.

In this sense the word’s use is derogatory, indicating “overload” and “acute mission creep.”

Too much is being asked of an activity best suited to a single task.

During the last couple of weeks, I have seen this phenomenon in legislation.

A bill purporting to “reform immigration” was sent to the Senate. The bill was so long and so involved that it was at once evident no one in the Senate (aside from its authors) could possibly have read it. Even the TITLE of the bill ends with the words, “and other purposes.”

And other purposes?

‘Scuse me?

I’ve now read a couple of reviews by brave souls who’ve actually sacrificed a weekend or more and read the whole thing. The bullet-point list alone is longer than a meaningful summary of such a law should have been.

Along the way, it becomes clear that this isn’t just “a law” but rather an entire SUITE of laws intended to “solve everything all at once.”

Now, even on the best of days this is a bad idea.

To be useful, legislation must be clear and concise.

You can stop laughing any time.

In the world of laws, however, the portmanteau concept poses an even bigger problem: it hides things.

It hides things simply as a side effect of being just too many words and too many pages all at once. Anyone trying to understand it all is going to miss something.

Worse than hiding things by accident, however, is hiding things on purpose. The use of reams of boilerplate text, loaded with “whereas it is deemed necessary by all concerned” and gems like “now, therefore, be it resolved hereafter that all aforesaid and referenced acts are subject to such modification and mitigation or enhancement as shall be adjudicated appropriate by those whose approval is required for further review and action on said matters,” have you reaching for the Visine before the end of page two.

After wading through the first hundred or so pages of a swamp like this, the reader can be forgiven for overlooking such nuggets as, “but in no case shall a person of probationary status be detained beyond the period required to verify his status, or 24 hours, whichever shall be shorter,” which magically requires releasing a person before any reasonable investigation can be conducted.

I’m not going to try to quote any significant piece of this bill, as others already have, and have done it better than I could have. And I’m sure when they get out of the hospital, their families will be happy to have them home again.

Who Writes This Stuff?

Many of you reading this are quite literate and every bit as capable of writing a coherent policy proposal as I am.

You could just as easily draft the essence of what’s needed for border security as any clown currently sitting in the Senate.

Many of us could.

And it wouldn’t take 700 pages. Or even 300 pages.

If you found yourself running to fifty pages, you’d probably tear it up and start over.

Lawmakers, however, seem really fond of the Dilbert Buzzword Generator as a source for boilerplate (you know, that sleepy-making text that gets stuck in every law “not valid with any other offer; void where prohibited,” that kind of thing) and can’t seem to write a simple declarative sentence without also providing it with an entourage of cloudy verbiage.

You can hide a steel file in a pie or cake. You can hide a rifle in a bale of hay. You can hide a canon in a haystack. And you can hide an invading army in a forest.

The text of laws should not hide things. It should not be permitted that a rule prohibiting, say, bikinis in crosswalks, is hidden in a highway maintenance funding bill.

A law should address a single issue wherever that is possible. The idea that the formal title of a bill can end with the phrase “and other purposes” is, well, just wrong.

Here’s my point: a legislative bill should never be so large you could hide an invading army in its forest.

And that’s the danger of a portmanteau bill. You are never entirely sure what’s hiding in it.

The “immigration reform” bill that has lately stalled in the Senate is just such a bill.

It’s very likely we have not seen the end of this bill. Moreover, it’s possible to split this bill up into twenty other bills, each with a clever title of its own, and sneak them individually across the legislative border in the dead of night.

When I see a portmanteau bill of this kind, other words like “ruse” and “subterfuge” and “red herring” and “distraction” and “Trojan horse” come to mind.

Be not deceived: the folks that want their guaranteed voting bloc and the folks that want their bargain basement slave labor and the folks that want irresistible cultural clout are not finished with this.

They’ll be back.

Scrutinize everything that comes before both houses over the next few months.

Here’s an exercise for someone: write a concise, cogent, clear proposal, not to exceed ten pages, that states the requirements for a fence or similar barrier along the U.S./Mexico border. When you think you’ve written it as clearly as you can, and included a funding requirement and bidding and all that, let me know how many pages it really took, and a word count.

Then compare that with what our friends in congress routinely write.

And then ask, if a regular Joe like me can do this, what the hell is wrong with those folks?

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