Ezra Klein, in his post Don’t Read The Bill!, defends Max Baucus’ plan to have the Senate Finance Committee vote on the Chairman’s mark, which is a summary of provisions which eventually could be reduced to legislative language. Klein writes that people should not read health care bills because it would be a waste of time because legislation often is obtuse and hard to understand:
This is why it’s silly to demand that members of Congress “read the bill.” They can’t understand the bill. Nor, incidentally, can the public.
Sorry Ezra, but reading the bill does make a difference. While often couched in almost incomprehensible language, the legislation proposed by the House in HR3200 and in the Senate HELP Committee shed light on the monstrosity of what Democrats call health care “reform.” Many groups and bloggers (including me) have been able to go through the specific language to demonstrate aspects of the legislation which are not apparent in summaries.
The reason supporters of Democratic proposals don’t want the people to read the bills is not to spare people the trouble, but to spare Democrats the trouble of having to explain the increased taxes, penalties, loss of privacy, rationing, loss of private coverage, government intrusion, and deficits.
So Ezra, if you don’t want to read the bills, that’s fine. But many of us will, assuming House and Senate Democrats let us, and we expect our representatives to do the same.
——————————————–
Related Posts:
Baucus Rosy Numbers Will Fade
THERE IS NO BAUCUS BILL
Bureaucracy Expansion Act of 2009
IRS The New Health Care Enforcer
Taxing Your Mere Existence
Health Care Tax Insanity Chronicles, Part 3 (IRS To Decide Amount of Taxation)
Follow me on Twitter and Facebook
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
If our elected representatives are too "obtuse" to read and understand their own proposed legislation, then they shouldn't propose it in the first place. Nor should they represent us in Congress.
Thank you for the Post of the Day link, BTW. Much appreciated.
If its all so crazy tough, maybe we should do away with elected officials and just let the super-smart eastern/media elites make policy by fiat. You know, just save all us dummies the trouble.
I know, I'm probably just overly cynical, but something tells me Ezra didn't feel this way about the Patriot Act, Welfare Reform, No Child Left Behind, the authorization to invade Iraq, the Defense Budget, etc, etc.
But what does I noh? I iz two dumm.
Via the TaxProf http://tinyurl.com/ye2jlxn
80% Marginal Tax Rates After Health Care Reform?
Unreal. How stupid are they?
I gotta ditto all of the above.
If it's too burdensome or incomprehensible to read and cross reference a bill, or if they choose to rely entirely on a colleague's recommendation without coming to a conclusion for themselves, Congressional members have absolutely no business sitting on Capitol Hill.
I pray the electorate remembers this nonsense next year at mid-term election time — if we're still allowed to vote. I'm beginning to think Massachusetts citizens have already forfeited that right.
I demand a public reading of the entire bill in front of the Senate before any up or down vote on said entire bill.
Tom Callow – taxpayer