Now that is a fillibuster
The 2,074-page Senate health care bill would take 34 hours to read cover to cover — and that’s just what Sen. Tom Coburn wants done on the Senate floor.
The Oklahoma Republican has threatened to invoke parliamentary rules to force the Senate clerk (or more likely, a team of clerks) to read the massive bill before the full Senate begins formal debate on the legislation.
The move is strictly according to Senate rules, which say any senator can demand a bill be read in its entirety before debate begins. While Democrats could, if they wish, repeatedly make motions to end the soliloquy, Republicans on the floor could object, and the reading would continue.
You have to pity the poor Clerks. Imagine if we had the rule in the NZ House – that you could demand a reading of a bill, actually include it being read out.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:07 am
Be a damm good idea especially when you recall that Williamson admitted that he voted for a bill last year but had no idea what was in it. The should all be made to sign off individually on each bill. After all that’s what the rest of us have to do with our legal transactions.
These turkeys that we pay so much to feed and water can’t even be bothered doing that.
Something wrong there.
Wonder how many others just vote because they are whipped and vote without reading. The dog chipping bill is a good example of the stupidity that happens when the pollies slide by without accountability for their actions.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:18 am
Obama’s socialisation of the U.S. economy continues unabated. The Messiah has increased the U.S. deficit by almost 2 trillion dollars, and this monstrous bill will add even more debt.
Obama, the new Jimmy Carter, could yet be defeated in his health reforms attempt. The next step is a full debate on the combined House and Senate bills. The political battle (and the fun) just started.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:20 am
This reinforces my perception that the US political system has become atrophied. The founding fathers may have been wise to make the constitution so hard to change – this aspect of it may have been invaluable in the US’ first century of existence. But now it is proving a millstone. The system (and not just the constitution) is too hard to modernise. Requiring that legislation be read aloud was fine 200 years ago when the longest law might only run to a few pages, but now…
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:28 am
How the fuck does a bill get to be 2000 pages long?
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:38 am
s.russell – my problem is that any law is 2074 pages long. Do these guys get paid by the page or something?
For a bill to be that long it either has an enormous amount of waffle in it, an enormous amount of pork that has nothing to do with the bill, or so many exceptions and carve outs that the bill is meaningless.
Shorter laws are usually better laws. Reading every one would sure as hell make them shorter. It should be mandatory to read every bill before passing it.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:44 am
PaulL; and to sign to say they have read every page and understood all the ramifications.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:45 am
s.russell – the requirement to have the bill read aloud does not arise from the US Constitution.
November 22nd, 2009 at 10:46 am
With every page initialed by each politician!
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:43 am
I actually thought that each bill was read in parliament before debate – isn’t that where the term “first reading” etc came from?
Maybe forcing each politician to not only read, but be forced to listen to, each page of every bill before each debate and vote would make a pretty good incentive to draft good, simple law to start with. Maybe then we wouldn’t get the crap legislation we keep getting now. All for a change to that!
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:49 am
Oh yeah – maybe the politician who is sponsoring the bill should be the one to read it
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 am
gazzmaniac……You are exactly right…There is no need for laws to be complex. The supreme lawmaker restricted his to ten simple ones and covered just about everything.
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Our parliamentary system still has a “First Reading”- back before printing was developed, all bills were read out so that MPs [or their clerks] could copy them. Nowdays it is just a notice that the bill has been printed and is available from the Clerk of the House- although every MP will already have a copy. IIRC, the ability to ask for the bill to be read in full lasted until the 1880s, when a lot of Parliamentary procedure was revised because of the obstructions caused by Irish Nationalists.
November 22nd, 2009 at 12:24 pm
backster – even if you don’t believe those stories (I don’t) if laws and regulations are simpler, more people can understand them and it is easier for people to comply. Not to mention that people don’t have to waste as much time and money on compliance and can get on and do what actually makes money.
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:03 pm
This seems like a really good idea. We should bring it back here. It would bring socialism to its knees. Someone like Sir Roger could propose an act saying, ‘We repeal…’ and then it would take ten minutes to get the law done. When a Government decided it wanted to pass twenty acts a year at 2,000 pages each, it simply would not have parliamentary time. This seems like a very honest way of capping the amount of time wasting through simple reality. Can we have a referendum on this?
November 22nd, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Absolutely, I can not see any need for passing a volume of new law that can not be literally read out in parliament, with any MP who wants to vote on it being present throughout.
How on earth are we supposed to follow the law if there is so much of it that we can not know what it is?
Even better: every law has to be passed again, from scratch, every five to ten years, or else it expires.
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:37 pm
Not so sure about the presence or absence of a politician during the reading of a bill being a prerequisite for being able to vote on it. If a bill were 2000 pages long, (and I were an MP) I would almost certainly vote against it simply because of its length. You don’t have to be present in the house while it’s being read to make that decision. It’s also a real punishment for MPs to be forced to listen to a BS green party (for example) bill that they’re never going to vote for anyway.
I do think that if the sponsoring MP had to read the bill themselves on each reading, it would make sure that they were drafted to be to the point, and wouldn’t need to be seriously amended. It may even speed up the passage of law through parliament.
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:38 pm
This link sheds some light on how the bill becomes so long:
http://cafehayek.com/2009/11/disgusting.html
November 22nd, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Won’t be happening for the Health Care Bill though, the Senate has voted to move to debate 60-39.
November 23rd, 2009 at 8:46 am
Good forbid they should have the slightest damn idea what it is they are debating or voting on.
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:41 am
Hey, they’ve always got an alternative. Here’s an excerpt from Rolling Stone’s article on the 2006 US Congress:
November 23rd, 2009 at 10:42 am
How many lines is our tax legislation? Or other significant laws?
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Whenever the Republicans get back in to power, I hope the democrats get the spine to do what the hypocritical Republican party does and is doing, and when they start to complain (as they did under Bush citing ’standard practice) shove it back in their hypocritical faces.
Under Clinton the Republican party wasted most of the senates time trying to impeach Clinton for a fucking affair for crying out loud and they have not got any better.
If a party did the equivalent here they would be ‘gone by lunch time’ (couldn’t resist), but then again we don’t have that beauty which is Fox ‘invent the news and then report it as news’ “News” (cough).
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:40 pm
“How many lines is our tax legislation? Or other significant laws?”
We just passed a 634 page taxation Act, which was just ammendments to international tax rules, and a few other issues. The main part of the act is in two volumes (the version I have in about 7 font is 1500 pages in the first volume and similar in the second volume including the schedules) then on top of that there is the Taxation Administration Act (811 pages) GST act etc etc.
So really as legislation effecting 300 million odd people, its size is to be expected. But this debate long ago left the key issue and went in fairy land, thanks in a large part to the news (cough) networks.
Personally dont care, not my mess, its the Americans, however I would sooner have Rupert Murdoch Shot than allow him to take over one of our main news networks.