Law Commons^™

Truth In Savings And The Failure Of Legislative Methodology, Eric J. Gouvin

Faculty Scholarship

The federal Truth in Savings Act (Truth in Savings) provides one example of failed legislative problem solving. On its face, Truth in Savings is a congressional attempt to solve constituents' problems. The statute, however, appears unlikely to resolve the issues presented to Congress and may even create new and unintended problems that will make matters worse. Truth in Savings, like many other legislative efforts, fails adequately to address constituents' problems because the methodology employed by legislative drafters suffers from a fundamental flaw - it has no built-in mechanism to define rigorously the problem being addressed. Without first identifying the problem, …