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.
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Health Care Tax Insanity Chronicles, Part 3 (IRS To Decide Amount of Taxation)
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