Steny Hoyer' s $18 Million Dollar Website Earmark is NO Laughing Matter

Washington Examiner/The Lid ^ | 7/12/09 | The Lid

[Shellybenoit]

Steney Hoyer likes to show the disregard he has for the voters of the United States:

On Tuesday he laughed at the suggestion that he read things before he voted on them. “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,”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.

Hoyer must have read part of the porkulus bill, however because it seems that $18,000,000 worth of your stimulus funds are being given to a Hoyer supporter, to redesign Recovery.gov, the website about porkulus. At the very least, that price tag is about 10x what it should cost to redesign and maintain the website:

[aeonspromise]

If they are signing bills that they have not read, they are incompetent and should be fired..sounds like the same mentality that gave loans to folks who could not pay..
I do not trust them to represent the people of The United States..

[Doc Savage]

Perhaps Euthanasia of Congress is the way to go!

[SWAMPSNIPER]

How about a size limit on bills? Anything too big to easily grasp is dangerous!

[library user]

Is there anyway that I - an ordinary U.S. citizen - can get a .gov web address? I tried GoDaddy and didn’t see it as an option. Apparently you have to be a native Kenyan to qualify.

[Keith in Iowa]

>>>>Perhaps Euthanasia of Congress is the way to go!

Not euthanasia. Retroactive abortions. All of ‘em.

[eyeamok]

they should all be in jail for the rest of their life for FRAUD. Voting on something you havent read should be a FELONY punishable by DEATH.

[KarlInOhio]

What is the legislative history of that $18 million line item? Let me guess, it was put in there by some anonymous committee staffer at some time no one can quite remember.

It is long past time for all bills to have the electronic version as the official one, so no one can add handwritten sections to the bills. Every paragraph, sentence, word and punctuation mark must be tracked to see who added, removed or changed it with the associated record of voting attached to each change. All changes should be tied to an individual representative or senator who made the change with no more unsupervised changes by Congressional staffers. Then keep that change history continually updated and publicly disclosed on the web (after all, the electronic copy is the official one so there will be no need to scan and run OCR on the official paper copy to see what is going on). It should be less than a second after a change is made before the people can read it.

You would still have problems with strawmen amendments where Rep. A puts in a change to benefit Rep. B to keep Rep. B's fingerprints off of it, but that would still be better than the current situation where the legislation fairy drops in a change at 3 AM.

< /my rant about secret, anonymous changes to bills>

[raybbr]

Hey, Jim,

All you gotta do is get in the pocket of a congressman and you won’t have to do the “freepathons” anymore. /s

[missnry]

On Tuesday he laughed at the suggestion that he read things before he voted on them. “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,”

CONGRESS IS OUT OF CONTROL!!

[DaiHuy]

““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,”

I am totally ok with that.

[ChildOfThe60s]

Simply more proof that my stance RE the federal government is correct. We have an unconstitutional federal government, thus not only are we not morally or legally bound to follow its laws, we are morally bound to NOT do so.

To Mr. Joe Biden: It is our patriotic AND Constitutional duty to NOT pay taxes to the federal government.

Of course I know that (at least for now) you and I must pay these taxes or our freedom and property will be confiscated. Which again only further highlights the illegitimacy of the federal government.

[domeika]

First off, aren't they guilty of some kind of dereliction for not reading legislation before voting on it? That is part of the job is it not? Secondly, as another poster pointed out, where is the tracking on this stuff? Things get thrown in by "satff members", but they don't know who, but hey it's no big deal right?

B.S. --- They are throwing around, away, and who knows where else OUR MONEY, in amounts that boggle the mind, and telling us not to worry about it. Why are THEY not held to the same standard that they demand of corporations? If they had to comply with "Sarbanes Oxley" (which I don't like in any way) themselves, it would be a different ball game.

[Travis McGee]

This reminds me of the late Roman Empire, when Caligula put horses in the senate.

Horses could do no worse today.

[big'ol_freeper]

....

[autumnraine]

Our government has elevated to the level of corruption which is what made us start a new country in the first place.

[flowerplough]

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,” and I’d guess that the stability and increased attention to detail would benefit America.