Posted on 07/03/2012 6:59:15 AM PDT by opentalk
After blasting the Senate last week for passing a 600-page bill no one had time to read, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) introduced legislation that would force the Senate to give its members one day to read bills for every 20 pages they contain.
"For goodness sakes, this is a 600-page bill. I got it this morning," Paul said Friday, just before the Senate approved a massive bill extending highway funding, federal flood insurance and low student loans rates.
"Not one member of the Senate will read this bill before we vote on it," he added.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
Harry Reid is the problem.
Why should they bother reading the bills? Congress has spent considerable energy converting itself into a rubber stamp for the Executive Branch. Reading the bills would just get in the way of using their insider knowledge to line their pockets.
Nancy Piglosi set the precedent. You now have to “pass them before you know what is in them”.
I have never been able to understand why our elected representatives vote on anything without reading it first. Were I a Representative or Senator, if I hadn’t been given time to read the bill I would just vote “No” until I had been given time to read and understand it.
They don’t WRITE their bills. The Apollo group wrote Stimulus, Cap and trade and the Heath care bill. If not for activist groups, lawyers and Lobbyists, there would be little legislation to pass.
They have paid staff to answer phones and read boiler plate responses, send out boiler plate emails and franking letters.
They have paid staff to attempt to summarize the bills they didn’t read. Do they even read the summaries? Or just take the staff’s word on how to vote?
So we pay them $175K a year to vote on bills they kind of know something about and to run for reelection.
They might have to put it on audio CD for some.
Oh, that's right the bulk of the work accomplished in Congress is done by unelected and unappointed professional staff. That administrative staff stays at work in the various Congressional offices until their political party loses an election. This reality was driven home by CNN after the 1994 Republican Revolution when they interviewed an Congressional Staff complaining that he didn't know how he was going to support his family. “His” congressman had lost his first reelection bid. The staffer had worked in “his” congressman's office for 12 years.
Any questions on why Congress seems so uncaring about the rest of us?
Taxation without representation.
Treat it like a classroom assignment. Divide the number of pages in a bill by the number of senators and have each stand and read their share of the pages aloud.
Put the entire thing live on CSPAN. Then allow 24 hours before they take a vote. If they were absent during any part of the reading they should not be allowed to vote. Bet there would be some different outcomes.
Great idea
I believe the Senate Rules call for reading the bill but there is always a unanimous consent request to dispense with the reading. Any one Senator (including Senator Paul) can object and the bill must be read.
Some of these dunb as##es probably can’t read.
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