This is how Democrat-controlled politics works nowadays -- 1) Let the lobbyists write the legislation. 2) Let the President use lies, false promises and scare tactics to sell it. 3) Keep the opposing party from having any say in the details. 4) Vote on the legislation (though you haven't even read it). 5) Enjoy the handshakes of the lobbyists and their special interest groups at the cocktail party afterward. And 6) When it proves disastrous, deny all culpability. Instead blame George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh and global warming."Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) predicted on Thursday that none of his Senate colleagues would "have the chance" to read the entire final version of the $790-billion stimulus bill before the bill comes up for a final vote in Congress."
And check out this enlightening (and frightening) post from The Sundries Shack:
...There is no chance in the world that any member of Congress is going to be able to read the bill by morning unless they are a trained speed reader. Even then, they’re not going to know the full ramifications of what the bill contains. I’ll do some back of the envelope calculations to prove it.
Let’s start with two generous assumptions: that the bill remains at 1,434 pages, and it gets in the hands of your member of Congress at 8 PM. Let’s also assume that there are about 350 words on each page.
In order for anyone to read the entire bill in 13 hours, they’d have to start the very minute they got it and read over 1.8 pages a minute every minute, without a break. They’ll be clocking in at a reading speed of 640.5 words per minute at that rate. If anyone needs a potty break, they’d better take the bill with them. Forget eating.
By comparison, the average human reads about 200-400 wpm if “reading for comprehension”. You only hit 640 wpm if you’re skimming the text (and the top end average skimming rate is 700 wpm and the comprehension rate drops dramatically).
Now, let’s get a little sample of what they’ll be reading at that eye-melting rate of speed.
Here’s a sample page from the original Stimulus Bill, HR1. Ready…..READ!
Okay, did you get all that? Including the bit about “sections 306 and 310B and described in sections 381E(d)(1), 381E(d)(2), and 381E(d)(3) of the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act”?
Do you know what those sections are and what they do and do not allow? Have you even read the Consolidated Farm and Rural Development Act? Remember, you have no time to look them up. You have another three-quarters of a page to read before your minute is up. And after that, you have 997 pages left to go. Hustle it up — 9 A.M. comes awfully early!
Oh, and so you know, that little section you just breezed through in 30 seconds is going to cost the American taxpayers almost 6 billion dollars.
Just know, as you’re at work tomorrow, that the Democrats will be voting to spend about $800 billion dollars without having the foggiest idea what they’ll be spending it all on. Oh, to be sure, they know how much money they’ll spend on their little pet projects but that’s it. They are taking on faith that throwing all that money at our economy is going to be good for us, even though they have no good idea where all the money is going to land...
