It has becoming clearer by the days that folks in the Federal, State and perhaps to a lesser degree, local Goverment, -don't put their pants on one leg at a time like the rest of us.
When House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), states ; “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” God help us all! Who are we electing?
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So Who Does Read The Bills?
Authored by: cgrotke on Wednesday, July 29 2009 @ 06:40 PM GMT+4
Easy answer. Lobbyists who write the bills read them. They make sure
everything works for them.
Congresspeople haven't been reading bills for decades. Many get
handed speeches written by their offices and they just read what they
are told.
This is like the Patriot Act - thousands of pages ready to go and put
into law quickly after a traumatic event - except health care reform
didn't suddenly pop up last month - some have been trying to change
it since things became for profit in the 80's.
Why it has taken 30 years, and why we don't want everyone to be
able to see a doctor, is the question.
That said, I would encourage you to read the bill and report on what
you find. Others do this and find very interesting things tucked in.
Congress isn't going to do it for us - it is clear we have to provide the
oversight ourselves.
Let's dig in. Want to assign sections to people? How should this work?
Authored by: spoon on Wednesday, July 29 2009 @ 08:12 PM GMT+4
Winston Churchill is famous for not reading anything that did not arrive with a cover summary no longer than one side of one page. That applied to reports regardless if they were 10 pages or 1,000.
In a different but related vein. An old friend was the General Manager of a large and well-regarded music distribution company which also did a fair amount of producing. I was accustomed to seeing, when I would occasionally meet him at the end of a workday, a large toilet-paper sized box outside of his office fully loaded with tapes sent by groups seeking a chance for recognition. Over ninety-five percent were discarded into the box with no more than a glance to see if he recognized the name of a musician. Of the other five percent he MIGHT listen to a few bars of the opening track. Basically if new music didn't arrive with names that he knew or a recommendation from a respected person in the music industry it was almost automatically shit-canned. Why did he do this? Because they received over a thousand tapes per week.
A Vermont state legislator once apologized for not getting back to me sooner, explaining that hundreds of e-mails arrived each week. E-mails. Not letters, not personal visits, not reports of all lengths. E-mails alone.
Authored by: vtstream on Wednesday, July 29 2009 @ 11:46 PM GMT+4
Obviously our legislators must read new bills before they vote on them if they are to make the decisions we elected them to make. Though they might not have time to consider every nuance, I'm hoping that they have staff that can review sections and report back to them about areas of concern. If not, then we are in serious trouble. Frequently, it seems, our congressional representatives will concentrate on one area more than another. For instance Bernie seemed to favor working on prescription drug issues and veterans issues. I have no problem with this. You can't be an expert in everything.
With this new health bill, I think this is a different situation however.
This is an expensive proposition. A major change. Even though I am in favor of public health care, the details of this bill have not really been clear. I think the President is at fault here for not being more specific.
I read the news a lot. My knowledge of this bill is based on that news. So far, all I know is that they want to charge millionaires a 5% surcharge tax on income, require that businesses offer health insurance, standardize the record keeping by using current computer technology, and spend more on preventative health care to reduce costs in the long run.
My take is that if you are wealthy or a business owner, you won't want this because it is going to cost you more money. THAT is why its having a hard time getting through. Those in power, ie., wealthy and ownership class, want to hold onto their wealth and power. I think it is that simple. What else is there to know?
Anybody know the number of this bill? I'll actually start reading it. Who knows what's in it? Nobody does unless they read it. Let's read it!
Authored by: Maus Anon E on Thursday, July 30 2009 @ 12:00 AM GMT+4
Who reads the bills? Lackeys read the bills, same as it always has been. Elected representatives read summaries, some written by the authors of the bill, some written by opponents of the bill.
If anyone has really been under the impression that every representative ever read every page of every bill that came before them, I have a series of bridges for sale that you might be interested in.
The reality is, of course, that if every representative really did read every page of every bill, the nation would have become paralyzed by the bottleneck of bills more than a century ago.
Authored by: xteeth on Thursday, July 30 2009 @ 11:13 AM GMT+4
So did you read the fine print on the back of your house fire insurance? Did you read the disclaimer that came with that Happy Meal? Then you must be a stupid, thoughtless, dishonest, weasel of a parent. Having an LP tank indoors invalidates your fire insurance, opening the package absolves the toy manufacturer from liability in your child's choking death.
Get a grip. My congresswoman has a staff of 16 and they work their little tookuses to the bone trying to make sure that they at least know the dishonest crap that lobbiests sneak into bills. And what difference does that make? She is the only one (probably your Bernie is another) I know of that doesn't take PAC money or money from corporations. Our congress is not ours. We pay a few percent of the money that they need to get elected and the result is that they represent those that give them the rest of the money. It is well that you not look too closely into the finances of even the most conscientious of our elected officials after they have been in office for a while.
All I can think is that corporatist interests have at the back of their minds that if they completely sell us down the river too fast there will be a revolution so it is a balancing act for them. Still, there is no doubt how well they are doing. If you think anything changed with the imprisoning of Abramoff you are demented. Since 1979 tax rates on the top 1% have declined 15% and their income has tripled. All by itself, the stock market could be dragged up to 20,000 if we were allowed to invest in lobbying firms. The sickness insurance industry is spending $1.4 million a day. What possible difference could it make if anyone read the bills?
---
"Some people cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go." Oscar Wilde
everything works for them.
Congresspeople haven't been reading bills for decades. Many get
handed speeches written by their offices and they just read what they
are told.
This is like the Patriot Act - thousands of pages ready to go and put
into law quickly after a traumatic event - except health care reform
didn't suddenly pop up last month - some have been trying to change
it since things became for profit in the 80's.
Why it has taken 30 years, and why we don't want everyone to be
able to see a doctor, is the question.
That said, I would encourage you to read the bill and report on what
you find. Others do this and find very interesting things tucked in.
Congress isn't going to do it for us - it is clear we have to provide the
oversight ourselves.
Let's dig in. Want to assign sections to people? How should this work?
We can read the bill, once they settle in on one.