4 ms·

I think it's common for Congress to vote on legislation thousands of pages long well before any of them could possibly have had time to read the final version.

I think it's common for Congress to vote on legislation thousands of pages long well before any of them could possibly have had time to read the final version. So this is, sadly, not surprising.

bottled_poe 5y ago
Well then, they are failing to fulfil their responsibilities.
dlp211 5y ago
This is a generally overly simplistic take. It would be impossible for any single legislature to read all the bills, so that is not done. The vast majority of large bills are produced ahead of time and only marginal changes are made as the bill gets closer to a final vote. The bills are read ahead of time by key members from each party and almost every legislature's staff.
WoahNoun 5y ago
The bill was produced by the legislative staff working for the legislator. I assume their staff read the bill they were in charge of producing.
cogman10 5y ago
This is a symptom of the problem. At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills. Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats" B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing. Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster. So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation. If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party. And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered. That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
Yeah. My it'll-never-happen dream is that Congress adopts the rule that no member can vote for a bill that they haven't personally read in its entirety. My second it'll-never-happen dream is that the president starts vetoing every bill longer than, say, 100 pages (except perhaps budgets) simply because they are too long. Oddly enough, computers are enabling this. You couldn't get bills thousands of pages long with typewriters, because they get that long with a series of changes. It just wasn't physically possible to re-type it time after time, and then run it through Xerox machines to produce copies for everyone who needed them.

I think it's common for Congress to vote on legislation thousands of pages long well before any of them could possibly have had time to read the final version. So this is, sadly, not surprising.

bottled_poe 5y ago

Well then, they are failing to fulfil their responsibilities.

dlp211 5y ago

This is a generally overly simplistic take. It would be impossible for any single legislature to read all the bills, so that is not done. The vast majority of large bills are produced ahead of time and only marginal changes are made as the bill gets closer to a final vote. The bills are read ahead of time by key members from each party and almost every legislature's staff.

WoahNoun 5y ago

The bill was produced by the legislative staff working for the legislator. I assume their staff read the bill they were in charge of producing.

cogman10 5y ago

This is a symptom of the problem. At this point, the only bills we can pass federally are budget reconciliation bills an small token "Juneteenth is a holiday" bills. Why? Primarily because of the senate filibuster rule. We require that 60+ senators agree on every bill passed because every bill gets filibustered. That doesn't work well when you have A: A party that coined the phrase "do nothing democrats" B: A senate minority leader that openly says their job is to stop any legislation from passing. Compromise is dead at this point, because regardless of the compromises made, the minority party will filibuster. So the end result is the only bills that get passed are budget reconciliation bills and those try and cram in everything that could possible be thought as "budgetary" into a single bill. Hence, thousands of pages long legislation. If you want to be mad at giant bills, be mad at the party that filibusters all tiny bills. Go read HR-1 and be mad that THAT bill is being filibustered (make federal voting day a national holiday and extending early voting). Go read any of the small common sense bills that get filibustered simply because they came from the opposing party. And if you really want to get mad, go read up on the Jan 6. investigation bill that had 24 amendments added by republicans and 6 added by democrats that was ultimately filibustered. That's where we are at. We've got Democrats bending over backwards to try and appear bipartisan and Republicans who are playing the game of "The best way to make democrats look bad is to filibuster everything".

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

Yeah. My it'll-never-happen dream is that Congress adopts the rule that no member can vote for a bill that they haven't personally read in its entirety. My second it'll-never-happen dream is that the president starts vetoing every bill longer than, say, 100 pages (except perhaps budgets) simply because they are too long. Oddly enough, computers are enabling this. You couldn't get bills thousands of pages long with typewriters, because they get that long with a series of changes. It just wasn't physically possible to re-type it time after time, and then run it through Xerox machines to produce copies for everyone who needed them.