House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Tuesday that the health-care reform bill now pending in Congress would garner very few votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.
“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.
Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.
In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.
#2, #18 getim:
What is your problem? First of all, you think we can trust all of the Democrats. WTF. Is this a joke? I don’t think I trust half the members of Congress, from either party. Do you seriously think a (Democratic) member of Congress can trust his colleagues “not to do anything stupid, unlike Repugs”? Seriously.
Secondly, you blame Republicans for “8 years of a police state where they (Democrats) were muzzled and sidelined.” Funny, I remember the Democrats winning majority in both House and Senate (not to mention many state legislatures) in 2006. I also remember a lot of campaign promises the Democrats made, most hinging on their winning a majority. They did. But they didn’t cut off funding for the Iraq war. They didn’t try to impeach Bush, or even bother him too much. They didn’t really change much of anything.
If you are so worried about a police state, think back to the 2008 Amendments to FISA. Among other things, it grants immunity to the companies that illegally wiretapped on Bush’s orders. So the Democrats, instead of trying to impeach Bush for illegal wiretapping, passed a law protecting the telecoms from lawsuits. So my final question is, you really think we can trust these guys not to do anything stupid?
It never occurs to anyone that maybe the size of these bills is part of the problem? If a congressman won’t commit to reading through an entire bill, how likely is an ordinary American to do the same?
#22,
I completely agree with that. I don’t understand this recent obsession for huge bills. Smaller ones offer fewer opportunities for riders and earmarks. They’re also probably easier to understand, and more likely to focus on one specific issue and get it right, rather than include huge swaths of provisions about myriad things.
First off, yes, the size of the bills is ludicrous. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (HR 1, 2009, aka the “stimulus package”) weighed in at over 400 pages. I’ve personally read about 80 of them — and that took about 4 hours (way slower than my normal reading pace).
Most Congressional bills are so massive that no normal, sane person could be expected to read them all the way through. They should be smaller, but … well, what can you do?
Anyway, to those challenging for a link to the ARRA, as signed by Obama, with a convenient little comment form right next to it. It’s a 13.4-MB PDF. This is where I got the copy I had to read. And you can always find ANY legislation via THOMAS on the web.
jbenson 2,
Just because the bill is posted for 5 days doesn’t mean congress people will read it.
Still I think it is a good idea — but a better idea is to post the bill BEFORE congressional debate so public opinion can shape it.
Posting the bill after the vote but before the signing isn’t very helpful because it’s too late to change the legislation.
Still, this is a pledge Obama should keep.
I’m still waiting for the O’Mama website that gives actual details of how the porkulus $ are being spent… Just broad generalities so far.
Josh O,
In that cartoon congress wasn’t being compared to a chimp.
But you know that already.
Don’t fail the test of intellectual honesty.
The stimulus bill was 1000+ pages long, and not released (printed copy only, no e-copy) until 45 minutes before the vote. As such, NOT ONE lesgistalor had read the bill before voting on it. None the less, all but eleven Democratic congress people voted in favor of the bill. Talk about a rubber stamp legislature. None of the Republicans voted in favor. Why would they vote 4 billion dollars of new taxes for us without reading the bill?
#28 Les,
4 billion dollars of new taxes? I thought the bill was something like 700 billion dollars. That’s $700,000,000,000. To put that in perspective, 700 billion divided by 300 million (about the US population) is 2,333. So this one bill could cost around $2000 for every man, woman, and child in the US, rich or poor, working or retired, if distributed equally. What happens when you consider that many of these people can’t pay this? In fact, some are getting welfare or social security, costing the government money.
The taxes to pay for this would be horrendous. So the government basically prints money. The US money supple expands, but stays the same total worth. The result? The dollar experiences inflation that exactly offsets the government’s spending. Money is transferred from anyone holding dollars (in the form of loss from inflation) to the government (in the form of their printed money).
Inflation tax is quiet, insidious, and impossible to avoid if you use the currency in question. Additionally, higher inflation causes tons of problems, such as discouraging saving, encouraging dept, increased expense of raising prices more frequently, and promoting a “spend now” attitude. If inflation gets too bad people will begin to horde, and resort to barter as the dollar becomes unsuitable for transferring meaningful amounts of wealth. Granted, we probably won’t see anything like this anytime soon, but the government’s overspending takes time to trickle down, and will really hurt in the future.
@Les:
The stimulus bill was about 430 pages long, NOT 1,000. I have a link to it a few comments above yours. You can read it now if you’d like. True, it was not released to Congress with enough time for them to have read it. (No matter how fast you read, 430 pages in 45 minutes ain’t gonna happen.) And yes, it was rubber-stamped and does contain quite a bit of pork. On the other hand, show me any other Congressional bill that WASN’T pork-laden. Just one. From any administration, any party, anywhere, any time in the U.S.
# 29 ahtnos said, …
Don’t forget. Inflation causes wages to rise and the tax brackets don’t get adjusted for actual monetary inflation so the gov over time gets more and more of the real wealth created and, the people keep less & less…
The Progressives (left and right) are going to destroy freedom and civilization because they’ve now got enough tards lined up to vote their evil asses in.
Enjoy the ride to hell.
The inmates now run the asylum…until 2010.
Nuff said. Some of it very good.
Both parties have trashed America.