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.
Lets be real no one person could ever read all text in the bills passed. That’s why they have staffers. The staffers pay attention to the details the congresspersons work on the big picture stuff. May not be the best system but that’s how it works.
If the bills are being written by Democrats, I don’t see a problem. You can’t roll back nearly a decade of damage by forcing every member to read every word written by his colleagues (who he can trust not to do anything stupid, unlike Repugs). We have to get this stuff done if we are to get this country onto a new and positive track.
This is just another Repuke hit job on the people who beat them.
I wonder if “members read the entire bill” actually is Congressspeak for the staff of the congressperson reads the entire bill and what he is “actually” saying is that not even the staff will have time to read, much less think about, this bill?
At least it will be posted on line for 3-4 weeks so the Public can read it and offer our constructive criticisms and cost/benefit analysis, and alternatives.
Talk about your blasphemy.
#2 “If the bills are being written by Democrats, I don’t see a problem. You can’t roll back nearly a decade of damage by forcing every member to read every word written by his colleagues (who he can trust not to do anything stupid, unlike Repugs).”
Get over it! Doesn’t anyone ever get tired of blaming the “Repugs” when it is both parties that has been responsible for the damage?
They all need to be sent home!
Soi, what happened to Obama’s promise to post bills online 5 days before voting?
Hmmmmm…
Does it need to be so long? Are the Patriot Act and the DMCA shining examples to follow? What about using Regulations for the details? Or is that just not the way things are done? Sorry, I’m from a different country.
Bobbo said At least it will be posted on line for 3-4 weeks so the Public can read it…
How about supplying a link to the trillion dollar Stimulus bill that is creating all the new jobs?
Careful, the last time somebody compared Congress to Chimpanzees, they were accused of being racists because they were *really* comparing Obama to a chimp, so we were told by people who failed civics.
Use that same caption and picture for O’mama. Want to bet whether he is reading what he signs into law?
This summer is starting to remind me somehow of summer 2001…
I really fucking hate that I am agreeing with Dick Cheney…
Bobbo, if it was like the cap and trade bill, then the public will not have time to read it first either.
#8 – any takers? URL?
I’d love to see the link to the government supplied website with the complete word for word transcription of the trillion dollar stimulus package that was signed into law.
The Obama administration is not very “Transparent” on their past promises.
Maybe Congress would pass fewer laws if they were required to read them. No one can know the whole law because there are so many of them and some contradict each other.
We are living in a police state and anyone can be arrested because there is a chance they might have violated some law somewhere.
Every twenty four months, the idiotic American voters have the chance to unelect the entire House of Representatives. Instead, they suck up crap fed to them by the media, and are completely unconnected to what is going on and vote for the name that they have heard of before that has the correct R or D after it. Gerrymandering does the rest…. Get your dose of Michael Jackass today, everyone?
they didn’t read the patriot act before passing on it either. this is sadly nothing new.
Nader once offered 10,000 to charity to any congressman to read and then answer a few questions about the patriot act. As I remember only one took him up on it, and he changed his vote to “no”.
—-Get over it! Doesn’t anyone ever get tired of blaming the “Repugs” when it is both parties that has been responsible for the damage?—
Don’t you get “tired of” blaming viruses for giving you colds, or rain for getting you wet?
Fact is that the Repukes have destroyed this country despite the best attempts of Democrats and progressives to keep it together during 8 years of a police state where they were muzzled and sidelined.
So no, I’m not tired of blaming them. They did it, they did it all, and they can never be let off the hook.
Go masturbate to Rush Limbaugh some more, your rightwing moron.
#18 “So no, I’m not tired of blaming them. They did it, they did it all, and they can never be let off the hook.”
“Fact is that the Repukes have destroyed this country despite the best attempts of Democrats and progressives to keep it together during 8 years of a police state where they were muzzled and sidelined.”
Poor, well-intentioned, innocent Democrats, they try so hard.
#18,
As much as I agree with you about the history of the last 10 years…
Health care reform is going to come out of the sausage grinder as
“Buy health insurance or pay a fine and go to jail”
And immediatly those self financed health care plans will all become crazy with $1000 deductables, and 30/70 copays.
Then when the last few remaining people with any sort of meaningful insurance coverage have lost it in 10 years from now, they will revisit it again.
There is an entitlement complex among health care consumers that I find absolutly mind boggling. People are using doctors offices as a sort of day spa and it just isn’t right, and that is the trend that is driving increaed cost. As the boomers age, that wellness coverage is only going to get worse, and more expensive.
It will litterally be a case of people being forced to buy emergency coverage to pay for the people who go to the doctor because they are bored.
#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.
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.
# 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.
Nuff said. Some of it very good.
Both parties have trashed America.