Friday, July 10, 2009
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Do This
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Posted by:
Jillian Bandes at
9:58 AM
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Congressional bills often range from hundreds to thousands of pages, and the Democratic Congress has been shortening the amount of time allotted between when a bill is penned and a Member must vote. The health care bill will probably run at least 1,500 pages, and Congressional Republicans will have 3 days to peruse it. House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.) laughed when asked if Members should have enough time to read a bill -- and that's not right.
DownsizeDC.org is trying to mandate the reading of bills before Members can vote on them. They're encouraging all constituents to write their representatives and express support for the measure. It's a worthy cause.
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Good people require very little goverment and you can't govern bad people at all. Complexity is the refuge of tyrants. |
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Here's how to reduce the size of bills, The Feds should stick to their limited powers and lets States, Counties and Cities decides what works best locally...
As someone that has been entrenched in the AEC (Archictecture/Engineering/Construction) world for years, I could fill pages here of stupidity I have had to deal with from Govt mandates.
As one example; Have a structure being built in Sunny So Cal that must be built in 4 phases instead of all at once. This is to circumvent Flood Plain issues set forth by Congress for FEMA. I could understand the need for this along the banks of Mississippi or the Gulf Coast,etc. But because of an arbitrary line drawn by the Army Corp of Engineers, we are subjected to a 9 foot flood in Southern California? If that happens here its time to gather the animals and build an Ark.
Brought to you by the people of Congress and blanket rules for the enitre nation. |
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...when the government was, you know, limited by the Constitution. Remember that quaint old document? Actually left most choices to the citizenry. Imagine. |
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If ignorance of the law is no excuse, then is ignorance of the law no excuse? |
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"my lines about the "countless volumes" massively burying the people with increasing regulations, etc., etc."
We live in a large, complex country; it's impossible to specify the relationship between the government and the population simply, and in fact it would be a very bad idea to attempt to do so. If you want your laws to be simple and clear, find yourself a deserted island and write your own. Don't take anyone else along; they'll just make the laws more complex. |
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...thank you for making my overall point. Obviously you strain at gnats out of context and miss entirely my lines about the "countless volumes" massively burying the people with increasing regulations, etc., etc. There was an old time senator, I believe it was Everett Dirksen(?), who used to say something like, "$100 million here, a billion there, pretty soon we start talking about REAL money". Geez, you lefties really should read and think about what you read before going off knee-jerk reactionary. |
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Wonder how many pages they would be with the pork taken out. |
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...that maybe, just maybe, bills are too big. Who was the guy proposing bills be limited to one or two pages? Hire him. |
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"Continuing to build...
...the great Paper Curtain. 1,500 unread words here"
1,500 WORDS is nothing. We're talking documents with MILLIONS OF WORDS. That's what happens when you're writing about a country with 300,000,000 individuals. Put it another way, a 1,500 page health care bill has one word for every 667 people in the country. Would you want to be one of the thousands of people who got the word "a"? |
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I am afraid you are right about Mr. Kruschev's words. At the time I thought it was absurd. Now I am not so sure. |
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...the great Paper Curtain. 1,500 unread words here, another 3,000 or so there is no big deal (thanks for the frankness, Vlad). It is job security for the lawyers who produce the countless volumes of words that constantly bury The People in massively increasing regulations, taxes, fees, and whatever other euphemism Big Government lawyers wish to use in order to gain increasing power over The People. It's beginning to look as if the last laugh belongs to Mr. Kruschev when he uttered the famous "we will bury you!" prophesy. The Big Government lawyers are burying us a few thousand words at a time. |
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What Bob said, plus: what do you think will change if everybody in Congress does read the 1500 page health care plan, or the 10,000 page annual budget, or a 5,000 page highway bill? |
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"It would be nice To think that our representatives actually read a bill before signing off on something that will effect the entire country."
In fact, large complex documents are rarely read "cover to cover" by a single individual. A congressperson (or any executive) who wanted a detailed, careful analysis of such a document would assign it to his staff and they would each read and analyze sections of it according to their area of expertise. Then the staff would meet and discuss what they'd discovered, with much leafing through the document and cross-referencing, in order to prepare a written analysis. There's actually some pretty good software to assist in doing such a thing.
When I worked for DoD, I participated in several such exercises, analyzing proposals in the range of 1-10,000 pages each from contractors for large military development projects. It's hard, grueling work. Believe me, no one person EVER read one of those proposals in its entirety. There would be no point in doing so. |
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You hear nothing from a president on this issue.
Nothing from Obummer who made such a HUGE issue of bringing "transparency" to his administration, to Washington, to the politics surrounding his involvement.
Indeed, one would think that this president, if he was genuine, if he was honest, if he was serious, would make certain to take a stand on this subject with congress.
It fits. It is germane. It meets the definition.
HOWEVER, this is the same president who committed that he would not "sign" a bill until three days (cooling off period) after it was placed on his desk.
WHY?
So that everyone---not just congress----would have ample time to read it.
And where is this president on this issue? Where is the president who made such a big deal of this?
I maintain that Obummer is not a serious president. Not when he continues to flagrantly thumb his nose at those things he campaigned on.
Not when he declares a "ceiling" of 8% unemployment only to idly stand by when it hits 9.5%.
This guy is not only NOT serious.
He is incompetent.
He is, in the oft-used Liberal-logic of the Left, a consummate "LIAR". |
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I think our representatives would balk at the idea that they should be required to do their job correctly, it might take time away from the pressing business at hand of lining their pockets with bribes, and getting sweetheart deals for them and their families. |
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To think that our "representatives "actually read a bill before signing off on something that will effect the entire country. |
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