What's In This Thing?
Today, the House passed the $787 billion economic stimulus package. Far from being a bipartisan effort, every Republican voted against it, as did several Democrats; the final vote was 246-183.
A major problem arises, though, when we note that the bill is 1,071 pages long. According to CNS News (http://cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43478), not ONE representative had read the entire bill, and only one claimed to have read the preliminary bill.
As quoted in the above source, "Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), President Barack Obama's successor in the Senate, seemed baffled by the thought of actually reading the entire bill--as did his press secretary." Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) also mentioned that reading entire bills is something that usually doesn't happen.
It is a little disturbing to me that so much legislation is passed without Congress knowing exactly what is contained within it, especially this nearly-trillion-dollar stimulus package. This explains why so much pork gets passed: no one knew it was in there.
Aren't we paying these people to pass laws? Couldn't they at least have someone on their staff read it? Apparently that doesn't happen either. Such practices would never pass in the private sector; less oversight has resulted in poor management practices.
A major problem arises, though, when we note that the bill is 1,071 pages long. According to CNS News (http://cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=43478), not ONE representative had read the entire bill, and only one claimed to have read the preliminary bill.
As quoted in the above source, "Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), President Barack Obama's successor in the Senate, seemed baffled by the thought of actually reading the entire bill--as did his press secretary." Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) also mentioned that reading entire bills is something that usually doesn't happen.
It is a little disturbing to me that so much legislation is passed without Congress knowing exactly what is contained within it, especially this nearly-trillion-dollar stimulus package. This explains why so much pork gets passed: no one knew it was in there.
Aren't we paying these people to pass laws? Couldn't they at least have someone on their staff read it? Apparently that doesn't happen either. Such practices would never pass in the private sector; less oversight has resulted in poor management practices.
Labels: economic, legislation, stimulus
posted by The Maestro | 2:29 PM
1 Comments:
The following comment was made by Zach on my previous blog:
I definitely agree. Everyone must admit that the first stimulus package was full of holes and did very little to fix the problems that the banks had. I always hope that a battle over a bill will cause it to be looked at closely by both sides but for many Dems, this was just a chance to throw their support behind Pres. Obama and Geitner. I want to be optimistic but recent history doesn't give me much reason to.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home