Posted on 07/07/2012 11:58:09 AM PDT by John Semmens
Senator Rand Paul (R-Ken) has proposed that members of Congress be given a reasonable amount of time to read bills before they are asked to vote on passing them. This proposal was denounced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev) as “an unnecessary impediment to action.”
“I find it appalling that Republicans in this body are repeatedly trying to throw up roadblocks to progress,” Reid complained. “The notion that senators must read bills before they vote to make them into laws is fallacious. We have a staff that reads these bills for us. There is no need for us to slog through the lengthy and convoluted language of some of these behemoths.”
“As for the contention that passing laws without reading them is a mistake, I refer my colleague from Kentucky to the Supreme Court's recent upholding of the Affordable Care Act,” Reid continued. “None of us had time to read more than a tiny fraction of this 2700-page monster before we passed it two years ago. Yet, last week the Court has confirmed that we did a fine job.”
Reid suggested that Paul's proposal “might be moot after November. We've got a President who is learning not to be afraid of fully exercising his power to go over the heads of Congress if the situation requires it. He certainly can't be expected to hold back until Senator Paul has had a chance to read his Executive Orders before he issues them. At best, Senator Paul's proposal is premature. I can see no reason why we should vote on it.”
if you missed any of this week's other semi-news posts you can find them at...
http://www.freedomsphoenix.com/Opinion/114542-2012-07-06-semi-news-a-satire-of-recent-news-july-8-2012.htm
hey...what congressman in his right mind would agree to this. It might actually mean investing some time in thier job.
A sign of where the country is at today. It is not sad...it’s an OUTRAGE we’ve come to this.
And this proves that 0 is only the tip of the iceberg. A total overhaul is in order.
He’s being a little disingenuous here. The senate is required to read all bills before they are voted on but this is frequently waived by unanimous consent.
All it would take is for one senator to sit in his seat all day and deny unanimous consent requests and then compel a quorum to listen to it being read.
This can be done by any one senator, but nobody has the balls to do it. They don’t want to legislate. They want to swing in, vote and swing back out to do whatever.
Satire, people. This ain’t real.
Pelosi was interviewed on this by NPR:
“This bill is completely unfair. Some members of congress have dyslexia or other processing disorders. It’s typical of Republicans to assume everyone is the same. We respect all differences here and don’t want to push the entire House to read thousands of pages unless it’s actual law of the land. “
If she really said this, it’s beyond parody...
Do you have a link?
What’s wrong with the Pelosi technique? “We have to pass this bill to find out what’s in it.”
Is this the same as reading only the headline on Free Republic, and then commenting on it?
Dimmit, you almost got me again— right up to the “Reid” quote.
Although I agree, how will they ensure it has been read? A quiz? Also, the congresscriter would then be responsible for the content of the bill, since they had time to read it. I don’t see it being a bill of any substance.
Truthfully, excepting war resolutions and a few other things, what Paul should push for are “timetable” demands, that there be a fixed schedule of votes throughout the two year term of a given congress, with deadlines for committees to submit budgets, spaced so that congressmen and their staffs have enough time to read bills if they want to. With buffer time between budget bills for non-budget bills.
And because some of the committees are “sluggish”, include a penalty that if a House committee is late with its submission, that neither the House bill being voted on the floor, nor in conference committee with the senate, will include *any* non-related riders or pork.
Likewise, that any continuing budget resolution automatically lose any pork attached to the previous budget, so just doing a continuing resolution, as Harry Reid has done for four years, will automatically result in slashing that previous budget.
You know the original post was satire, so I added my fun. Sadly, any spoof on a Pelosi quote is too close to reality so don’t feel bad that you fell for it... Lol.
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