It’s a laugh a minute on Capitol Hill, where folks who supposedly represent us fritter away our freedom with giddy abandon. And without a glance at the fine print.
Well, it’s all fine print when you’ve got a cap-and-trade bill 900-plus pages long. This bill would tax businesses that need to produce more “greenhouse gases” than the new law would allow according to a formula so congested that, well, it takes 932 pages to spell it out. If the bill passes, it’s another punch to the gut of the American economy.
For a while, it seemed that Republicans on the energy committee might obstruct things, might insist that the bill be read. Aloud!
So the Democrats hired a speed reader. No reading was ever demanded. But since the guy had been hired, he was asked to zip through just a bit of the bill. His incredible machine-gun delivery cracked everybody up.
Well, DownsizeDC.org isn’t laughing. The activist group notes that the cap-capitalism bill was rushed through committee so fast that it could not possibly have been read, publicly or privately.
The group supports a Read the Bills Act to require every bill to be read in full before the House and Senate … and require all lawmakers to sign an affidavit affirming that they have read any bill they vote on. A sensible rule, long overdue. Seriously.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “So Let It Be Read”
Since the final shameful “stimulus” months of the Bush administration, this has simply been the modus operandi of the RATgress. The strategy has been to bum-rush EVERYTHING through the legislative process; no time to read it, no time to think about the consequences, and ESPECIALLY no time to let the public debate the issue. The 0bammunist is just a more able conductor of this process.
The RATs probably learned to do this after the HillaryCare debacle: the longer the public considered the costs and implications, the less popular it became. So now, full speed ahead. Make dozens of questionable appointments, spend a zillion dollars, wreck one industry after another — but do it so quickly that the spotlight of public debate cannot process each one before the next three have become done deals.
And who cares? OMG, Jon and Kate are splitting up! And who will be on the American Idol judging panel?
Long live The Republic Of Texas — Secession Now.
Lanczos, you are right for the most part, although the ratgressional procedure of shoving unread bills and last-minute pork through the legislative process has been going on a bit longer than than the tail-end of the Bushadmin.
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