Legislators want more time to read bills

WASHINGTON — There's a dirty secret on Capitol Hill: Legislators usually vote on bills that could radically change constituents' lives without reading them.

In part, this reflects the complexity of legislation. But it also shows the increasing distance between legislators and the mundane but important work of drafting laws.

Rep. Brian Baird, D-Vancouver, is trying to reverse that trend by pressing the House Rules Committee to require at least three days between the release of a bill and a vote on it, unless two-thirds of House members vote to override the requirement.

Buried inside hundreds of pages are clauses written by lobbyists and congressional staff members that could have dramatic policy effects. The elected representatives rarely see them.

"There is great truth to the fact that most people probably go by talking points: by the advice of staff, which is based on talking points; by the recommendations of their party leadership; and by input from lobbyists," Baird said. "But some of us take this matter very seriously."

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002100700_rush25.html

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=1019920&mesg_id=1020002

Read post six in this blog for a intense article on this story

Who the hell can read 3000 pages in a couple of hours. There are those who are counting on the legislators not even trying.

God bless Russ Feingold for pulling an all-nighter with the Patriot Act. I think he was the only one who read the dang thing, because he insisted that before he voted on it, he was gonna read it.

Dat's MY Senator what did that. When he came up for re-election this year, it wasn't even close. The other side tried to pin an unAmerican label on him for not voting for the Pat Act, but it didn't stick. Even several Repubs voted for him.

"Notwithstanding any other provision of law governing..." been slipped into a bill and we have not known about it?
How many times does this or similar phasing appear in the so called Patriot Act?

Who does stuff like this and why? More importantly what are we as American citizens going to do about it? The criminals in the Administration and in Congress must be exposed, charged, convicted of their crimes and put away till they are to old to do their damage up on this country and the world.

as American citizens going to do about it?"

They do what they do because we mostly sit on our butts between presidential elections. Most people only pay some attention once every four years. That is not enough.

Our politicians need to fear the wrath of the citizens. They aren't afraid of a us at all. We know and they know, the money, processes and gerrymandering are in lock down to deliver enough votes, from negligently uninformed voters, to return them to office over and over and over again, no matter what they do or fail to do.

Our Founders would be horrified that we allow members of the House of Representatives, in particular, to make a career out of being there. That was not their intent! That's why they have to stand for election every two years, so that they can be told by the people to go home, now it's some other homey's turn. The House was designed to have constant TURNOVER, not permanent occupation by a professional politician class.

Our campaign (the peoples') for the midterms in '06, needs to be based on the great American Founding Principle of TURNOVER.

My slogan for '06:

SHOCK THE HOUSE

REPLACEMENTS IN - INCUMBENTS OUT

EXPERIENCE THE AWE OF TAKING YOUR COUNTRY BACK

This applies across the board, Dems as well as Repubs. I think we might be able to generate significant participation from the non-voting citizens if we ran an unaffliated campaign such as this.

...they've done SO well in the past....

things better?????????????zig hail and get on with it. you don't need to read this. it's none of your business. we've got a country to rape here. so shut the fuck up.

BUT what are all those aides there for if they aren't reading the bills? You could always have your aide read it and bring to your attention anything that they think you would oppose. I just assumed it seems foolishly that they were getting read by somebody in the office before they were getting voted on.. silly me.

Somebody on DU earlier mentioned maybe them typing the bills up and sending e-mailing them to the senators and they could perform a simple document search for certain phrases or words like abortion or things like that that shouldn't be in a budget bill. Its better than nothing.

Perhaps they can get crib notes.

I see a new publishing market opening up here.

Sometimes I wonder how our nation ever got so messed up, then I am reminded of how poor the performance is from so many of our legislators.

Laura


Edited for awful spelling!!!

Everybody's saying 'huuuh huuuuuuuuh...what? Michael Moore was right?'
Oh wait, who needs to read bills? They come from the Bush administration, GOD blessed them! :puke:

vote on'em . . . "

To me, THAT was one of the most chilling moments in the film.

Others have tried to explain to me that staffers read, interpret, summarize, and present the bill packages to their representative. I have disagreed, saying that NOBODY reads the bills and they are voted on blithely. Fascism could be inserted on Page 657 and voted on and no one would know until it was enforced. Sort of like (excuse the pun) "Ignorance of the law is no excuse."

It's our business after all... And that way you'd better believe that ALL gazillion pages will be read, parsed and exposed.

(envisioning a pirhana nation, ripping into the bloat for tasty nuggets of perfidy)

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving!

limitations on the number items that can be included in a single bill. Eliminate the practice of piggybacking unrelated bills reduce the instances of poison pill legislation.

Why can't they have enough responsibility to do what we vote them in to do?

It's been like this for years and it's high time they get their act together.

And if it wasn't so serious, I bet the entire world is laughing at us. Actually, I think they would regardless by now.

before voting on it...if not, they will personally be fined $100,000.00 per incident....

That would clear things up and have those bills read pretty quickly...

To prove that they did it, there would be video cameras actually filming them reading it and pop quizzes in which they would have to actually answer what is in the bill....

Bills that are to be voted on should be posted on a website for the public to read and for gov't watchdog groups to review before they are voted on....(and to catch something that may have been "inserted" by some rogue "staffer")....

These are the words so frequently used to bypass the rules of the House or Senate which, I believe, require that legislation be read twice (or three times?) on the floor before it's voted upon. It has always seemed to me that any member of either chamber could object to foregoing the reading of the legislation in open session.

on and make into law that all citizens are expected to comply with even when elections are stolen from us, what a beautiful country we live in, freedom for all, lol.

patriot III will demand a life sentence in Federal Prison
for anyone accused of crawdaddin'

that it often doesn't actually say what it's doing - it simply refers to a section of the law by title and number, and then specifies how it will be amended. We're lucky that the Not-Istook Provision was so clearly stated, but it could just as easily have said something like (NOTE: I am making this up, because I don't know the tax code or what provision actually refers to the privacy of tax returns - and I don't really need to just to offer an example):

Title II, Section 498, Sub part B, 1)a is amended by striking the period after the words "for any reason" and inserting a comma and the words "except for the Chairman of the House Committee on Appropriations, the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, or their agents."

Nobody would know what that actually did to the tax code unless and until they looked up "Title II, Section 498, Sub part B, 1)a" and found out that it guaranteed that the confidentiality of tax returns would not be abridged "for any reason." or something like that.

and now Democrats are going to go over every piece of legislation with a fine tooth comb in order to make public the contaminated pork the GOP constantly tries to feed American citizens.

Better late than never I guess.

.. for a meaningful fight