In this case, to me, the bills just look ineptly written. That's to be expected, in a way; writing bills is not especially easy, and it usually takes a collaboration of people to look at all the possibilities and get it right. Unfortunately, sometimes that collaboration introduces corruption into the bill as well, since certain legislators will work for special interests. I don't think these bills are any different from others in this way.
I don't know how federal bills get written. In my state, where I ran for legislature this year (and lost, but it was a good showing in a district that heavily favors the other major party), there is a legislative office with lawyers on staff who write all the actual bills.
A wiki approach might be good. On the other hand, imagine what would happen to your open-source software project if everyone could contribute, nothing was explicitly vetted, there was no ability to fork, and the result really mattered and was difficult to change. Congress would, of course, vet the bill by voting on it if they chose to do so. Groups write model legislation all the time. Maybe this is something that the EFF could do? Another posted suggested having EFF look at these bills, which could be a good starting point.
