California Conservative

Since February, Greta van Susteren has been asking politicians and pundits alike why Congress refuses to read the bills that they’re voting on. Finally, Tom Carper admitted why they’re refusing to read the bills:

Sen. Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com that he does not “expect” to read the actual legislative language of the committee’s health care bill because it is “confusing” and that anyone who claims they are going to read it and understand it is fooling people.

“I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life,” Carper told CNSNews.com.

Carper described the type of language the actual text of the bill would finally be drafted in as “arcane,” “confusing,” “hard stuff to understand,” and “incomprehensible.” He likened it to the “gibberish” used in credit card disclosure forms.

As King pointed out here, this isn’t the first time Sen. Carper has admitted he doesn’t read the bills before voting on them:

The Senate Finance Committee considered for two hours today a Republican amendment, which was ultimately rejected, that would have required the “legislative” language of the committee’s final bill, along with a cost estimate for the bill, to be posted online for 72 hours before the committee voted on it.

Instead, the committee passed a similar amendment, offered by Committee Chair Max Baucus (D-Mont.), to put online the “conceptual” or “plain” language of the bill, along with the cost estimate.

Usually, the Senate Finance Committee considers “conceptual” language because the actual legislative language in a bill is filled with jargon and references to existing legal code that can make it nearly impossible to follow.

Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) described his attempts at reading the legislative language of a bill: “You read it and say, ‘What did that say?’” The committee, he said, uses “plain language so that even I can understand” a bill.

Here’s King’s reaction to Sen. Carper’s statement:

I wouldn’t accept that excuse from my students. Why do Delaware voters accept it from Carper?

I’d say that the state that kept sending Joe Biden back to the Senate time after time is capable of a great many things, although exercising even modest amounts of common sense isn’t part of that great many things.

There’s quite a controversy surrounding the writing of bills:

Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), who sits on the committee, told CNSNews.com on Thursday that the panel was just following its standard practice in working with a “plain language description” of the bill rather than an actual legislative text.

“It’s not just conceptual, it’s a plain language description of the various provisions of the bill is what the Senate Finance Committee has always done when it passes legislation and that is turned into legislative language which is what is presented to the full Senate for consideration,” said Bingaman.

But Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who also serves on the committee, said the descriptive language the committee is working with is not good enough because things can get slipped into the legislation unseen.

“The conceptual language is not good enough,” said Cornyn. “We’ve seen that there are side deals that have been cut, for example, with some special interest groups like the hospital association to hold them harmless from certain cuts that would impact how the CBO scores the bill or determines cost. So we need to know not only the conceptual language, we need to know the detailed legislative language, and we need to know what kind of secret deals have been cut on the side which would have an impact on how much this bill is going to cost and how it will affect health care in America.”

There’s no way I’ll trust legislation without reading the specific language. There’s a reason why “The devil’s always in the details” became a time-tested cliche.

Besides, there isn’t a logical reason to rush this legislation, though I’ll agree that there’s strong political considerations for rushing it. Even after the bill is signed, the tax increases are the only things that start this year. The rest of it, coincidentally, won’t start until 2013.

Politically speaking, it’s important to vote on this legislation before the “arcane” language is inserted. If the American people read the bill’s specifics, they’d be furious at what was being done to them.

If Mr. Carper isn’t interested in reading the real bill, isn’t he just President Obama’s rubber stamp? That doesn’t sound like checks and balances.

Technorati Tags: Tom Carper, Greta Van Susteren, Health Care, Health Care, Accountability, Checks And Balances, Democrats, President Obama

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 6:18 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Health Care, Obama, Special Interests. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.