Should legislators read the legislation they pass, or should they simply sign it into legislation? It’s an open question, apparently. In this video of a town hall meeting in Philadelphia yesterday, you can see a citizen asking Senator Arlen Specter, “When congressmen stop at the notion of reading a legislation because they are unqualified or they aren’t competent to understand it, how can we be confident that those congressmen are competent to re-engineer the entire health care system?”
It’s the essential question at the moment, but one that Kathleen Sebelius, the Secretary of Health and Human Services who stepped in to field it, deemed unfair: “I am not a member of Congress, have never been — that’s just a fact — I’m just, I’m just telling you…I have never seen a member of this congress work harder (than Specter), and it is unacceptable to ME for somebody to…” At this point, the crowd began to shout angrily, and Specter stepped forward to tell the audience that bills are often so large — “a thousand pages”, he said — that they have to be broken up into sections and handed out to his staff for perusal, because “we have to make judgements very fast…”
It was that phrase — “very fast” — that drove the crowd to almost apoplectically explode “Why? Why?” Those assembled knew that Specter had essentially said: “This is one more lengthy piece of legislation. There’s not enough time to for me to personally read it because it has to be passed quickly.”
Paul Mirengoff at NRO:
…it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Senate is not a deliberative body at all — not when Senators concede that they would vote on legislation to overhaul one-sixth of our economy, and arguably the most important sixth, without having read the legislation. Specter’s defense that there’s not enough time for him to read it all himself simply raises the problem in a more acute from: why would the world’s greatest deliberative body consider legislation on a timetable that leaves Senators with insufficient to see for themselves exactly what’s in the bill?
Mark Steyn, too, finds odd the notion of casually outsourcing the duties that are integral to one’s job description:
If (a legislator) doesn’t read the law before he makes it law, he’s not doing the only job he has. When you go to see Barbra Streisand, she has an orchestra and a conductor and arrangers and lighting designers and hair stylists, but she’s still expected to do the singing herself. If she stood up and said, “Okay, I’ve outsourced ‘People’ to my intern Kevin and ‘You Don’t Bring Me Flowers’ to the niece of a friend of mine who needed a summer job and the Yentl medley to some people Kevin met for a breakfast session and said seemed to know what they were talking about,” you’d begin to wonder why anyone needs Barbra.
Yep, I watched the Video and then made the mistake of joining the comments section under Ratturd3.
This is really beginning to bother me, you cannot debate with a Liberal, or an Obabot Lover. Facts don’t mean a thing they simply call you a liar and move on.
I hope and pray these are the same people on the front line when CWII comes.
,
They know not what they’ve done.
Syncro
“you’d begin to wonder why anyone needs Barbra.”
Heh
Nutz
Never underestimate the American people, it is possible that the American Republic is going to regenerate itself, It’s only odd that it took the presidency of Barak Obama to kick start it. Lincoln’s “new birth of freedom” hopefully won’t be as bloody as the last.
The old smoke-and-mirrors game to deflect and confuse rather than providing an answer. When you witness this you can be certain they have things to hide and do not want you to know you are about to be screwed.
The phrase they worked real hard on it is used when a piece of crap is presented. I have not heard that phrase on a good plan. On a good plan it is understood people worked hard on it and good job is said. When it is a crap plan it is like social promotion. There is no reason to like it but don’t tell them it’s crap cuz they went to meetings.
Didn’t the American revolution get started over the little issue of taxation without representation? When a politician votes for legislation without reading it and only votes according to dictates from above, then that politician is not representing his constituants. This state of affairs is a dictatorship, not representative democracy. The US population was ready to take up arms to overthrow totalitarian rule in the 1770’s and, if the Obamabots persist ramming through legislation, history is quite likely to repeat itself.
“Didn’t the American revolution get started over the little issue of taxation without representation”
I think it started over a bailout of the British East India Company. Here is the full title of the Tea Act, which was the focus of the protest.
“An act to allow a drawback of the duties of customs on the exportation of tea to any of his Majesty’s colonies or plantations in America; to increase the deposit on bohea tea to be sold at the East India Company’s sales; and to empower the commissioners of the treasury to grant licences to the East India Company to export tea duty-free”
uh, guys, same thing with the patriot act.
only a cynic would say it had already been drafted way before and 9/11 was just the first big opp to put it forward.
Senator Arlen Specter is a Toad… He along with McCain are the “Benedict Arnolds” of thier generation… McCain who now thinks its safe to defend Palin (where was he when the MSM feasting on her & family)… Gutless little shits need to bugger off
That’s astonishing.
When I was in Uni, I’d often read a thousand pages in a single weekend — and still find time to goof off with my buddies and chase girls (mostly unsuccessfully, but hey, it was still a time-waster…).
Garth
Seconding curious-george’s post, I was gobsmacked when they dropped that doozy Patriot Act, and it was very obvious no one had read it, as the Senate “debate” consisted of endless speeches about patriotism.
Politicians – who needs them? The brainy bureaucrats run this country, I don’t know who’s filled the Cheney-Rove vacuum down south, but they ain’t getting much done. I don’t underestimate the American people, but their greedy and obtuse elites have driven the bus right over them.
they can’t read they should not be allowed to write and that includes their own name on a bill.
patriot act. the idiot obama screamed bloody murder that it had not been read. just another asshole.
it doesn’t take much to be a prisoner unless your last name is Burchill and you were a candaian flyer during the second world war. a real candaian hero that very few canadians know about. a real hero that is hero.