The 119th Congress is trying to pass their 2025 budget, dubbed "The Big Beautiful Bill." It isn't beautiful, but it is big, and it isn't all budget.

This bill, and the small number I've peeked at in the past, are the reason I would never get into law-making.

Anyone can read it: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text

It's 1018 pages long, in PDF form, including the formatting, table of contents, and content. Almost all of it requires access to other documents of legislation, and probably other access past that. Too much of it reads like "in this law, in this section, in this sentence, change this to that." Almost everything in this document is something similar to that quoted block. Here's a real example:

Section 16(c)(1)(A)(ii) of the Food and Nutrition Act
of 2008 (7 U.S.C. 2025(c)(1)(A)(ii)) is amended—
  (1) in subclause (I), by striking ‘‘and’’ at the
    end;
  (2) in subclause (II)—
    (A) by striking ‘‘fiscal year thereafter’’ and
      inserting ‘‘of fiscal years 2015 through 2025’’;
      and
    (B) by striking the period at the end and
      inserting ‘‘; and’’; and
  (3) by adding at the end the following:
    ‘‘(III) for each fiscal year there-
    after, $0.’’.

Those are pretty straightforward edit instructions, but this should include the text of what the results should be, not just the changes to make. There are a few instances of that, including this bit which is just after that previous bit:

Section 6(f) of the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008
(7 U.S.C. 2015(f)) is amended to read as follows:
  ‘‘(f) No individual who is a member of a household
  otherwise eligible to participate in the supplemental nutri-
  tion assistance program under this section shall be eligible
  to participate in the supplemental nutrition assistance
...

I truncated that, they didn't. At least it shows what the whole change is, and not just the few word edits.

What the government needs is something like software change management, like Git4Law!

When we make changes to software, the requirements might come in something like "make the hours in a day an externally configurable value," but in the code will be a block or few of changes that can be expressed in a form of differences where you can see them in their whole. There's no reason to go back to a previous version, or more than one version back. There is a history, too, so you can see the results all the way back to the first time the text appears, as well as all the text that disappears or changes on the way.

I get it. Looking at the bill, it's impossible to track what everything is, unless you have the time to research all of the related material, and the material it relates to. I get that it's really hard to have that "I'll agree to your thing if you agree to mine," if those things are separated, so they're all rolled into this one big thing.

This thousand page horror show needs to infuriate more people and lead to serious change. And I'm not even remarking on the content of the document and what it means, just how it's constructed.