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Senator calls for more evidence-based lawmaking, warns reliance on lobbyists and experts without data
Summary
Senator Robinson used a floor speech to argue legislators need better data and estimates before considering complex technical bills, warning that political pressures and lack of basic numbers undermine good policy making.
Senator Robinson told the Oregon State Senate that lawmakers should apply the scientific method to legislation by asking for falsifiable evidence and basic practical estimates before spending time and resources on proposals.
Robinson said politics often produces the opposite of scientific practice because decisions are made for political reasons or on incomplete information. “The scientific method, the idea that experiments must be falsifiable... is the basis for enormous advances in science and technology,” he said on the Senate floor, and added that lawmakers cannot understand thousands of bills in depth during a single session.
He criticized reliance on limited sources such as occasional stakeholders or lobbyists and said experts appearing before committees sometimes do not provide the essential data needed to judge a proposal’s practicality. As an example he cited presentations advocating for storing CO2 in basalt “half a mile underground” that did not include cost estimates, saying it “does not make sense to put resources into considering [an idea] without an estimate on its practicality first.”
Robinson recommended considering fewer bills with more time spent on each and closing with a call for better information flow into committee work. His remarks were delivered during morning floor remarks and no formal motion or committee action resulted from the speech in the transcript excerpt.
