House Majority Leader Laughs Off Request for Members of Congress to Read Legislation

Meredith Jessup | July 08, 2009 2:37 PM

With history's largest overhaul of the U.S. health care system on the line, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said Tuesday that the health reform bill currently pending in Congress was not likely to garner many votes if lawmakers actually had to read the entire bill before voting on it.

From CNSNews:

“If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes,” Hoyer told CNSNews.com at his regular weekly news conference.

Hoyer was responding to a question from CNSNews.com on whether he supported a pledge that asks members of the Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it and also make the full text of the bill available to the public for 72 hours before a vote.

In fact, Hoyer found the idea of the pledge humorous, laughing as he responded to the question. “I’m laughing because a) I don’t know how long this bill is going to be, but it’s going to be a very long bill,” he said.

The reporter's question referred to a petition being circulated by Let Freedom Ring, a Delaware-based conservative organization. For more information on the "Responsible Health Care Reform Pledge" and to see if your representatives in Congress have signed on, visit LetFreedomRing.com.