Another Senator won’t read the health care bill

Another Senator won’t read the health care bill; Wellsy's World

Thomas Carper, Democratic Senator from Delaware and a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNS News that he doesn’t expect to read the actual language of his committee’s health care bill because it’s too “arcane” and “confusing.” Here’s what else he had to say:

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.

…When you get into the legislative language, Senator Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day and I don’t think anybody had a clue–including people who have served on this committee for decades–what he was talking about. So, legislative language is so arcane, so confusing, refers to other parts of the code—‘and after the first syllable insert the word X’–and it’s just, it really doesn’t make much sense.

…So the idea of reading the plain English version: Yeah, I’ll probably do that. The idea of reading the legislative language: It’s just anyone who says that they can do that and actually get much out of it is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.

…They might say that they’re reading it. They might say that they’re understanding it. But that would probably be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. It’s hard stuff to understand.

…I think if people had the chance to read that they’ll say you know maybe it doesn’t make much sense for either the legislators or me to read that kind of arcane language. It’s just hard to decipher what it really means.

There’s a lot of stuff there, but the admission is simply staggering. The continued idea that it’s perfectly acceptable to be absolutely clueless about the actual language of the bill is both a sad commentary on the state of our legislature and a frightening concept if one considers who holds the actual power. Is it the publicly accountable Senators who vote on it or the faceless lawyers and bureaucrats who write the real language of the bill?

Read the rest here.

Comment: The article points to a belief I have had for quite a while that our US Senators are nothing more than front-men for special interest groups. I'm sure one or two actually read the summaries provided to them, but as we have seen with laws such as The Patriot Act and Warner Defense Act of 2007, just to name two incredibly important examples, our legislators don't read the bills they vote for.

In fairness one can question whether repealing the 17th Amendment would curbed this; well the truth of the matter is that it wouldn't. Human nature is human nature no matter how one gets to office, we all recognize this. But the one aspect that I am certain of, with a repeal of the 17th our state legislators would not put up for very long a senator that would carelessly harm their respective state through laziness, incompetence, or any other deficiency, especially in this era of rapid communication.

Folks, the only way we can stop this problem in midst the rapidly expanding central government and deficient legislators is to return to the wisdom provided by the founders and the rightful power to the states. The states must have representation in the federal government as the founders laid out, and this means repealing the 17th Amendment.