{"id":3725,"date":"2010-08-25T15:55:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-25T15:55:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=3725"},"modified":"2010-08-28T08:30:05","modified_gmt":"2010-08-28T08:30:05","slug":"can-of-worms-opened","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=3725","title":{"rendered":"Can Of Worms &#8211; Opened!  UPDATE&#8230; Closed?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Can%20Of%20Worms%20-%20Opened%21%20%20UPDATE...%20Closed%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Senator Max Baucus, the guy who is acknowledged to the the &#8220;author&#8221; of the nearly 3,000 page puss saturated band-aid also known as the Health Care Reform bill, in response to a question of whether he actually read the final HCR bill, said this at a recent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flatheadbeacon.com\/main\/print\/libby_residents_relate_gains_drawbacks_of_asbestos_aid\/\">town hall<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cI don\u2019t think you want me to waste my time to read every page of the  health care bill. You know why? It\u2019s statutory language,\u201d Baucus said.  \u201cWe hire experts.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I for one would love to see who the &#8220;experts&#8221; were that crafted this bill. Can we see that please? You know, transparency and all that?<\/p>\n<p>PS. I love this exchange. Here&#8217;s Baucus, trying to ensure that the HCR bill is a good thing:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIt\u2019s not perfect, nothing\u2019s perfect, but I\u2019m telling you, ma\u2019am, it\u2019s a  good start,\u201d\u00a0 \u201cMark my words, several years from now you\u2019re  going to look back and say, \u2018eh, maybe it isn\u2019t so bad.\u2019<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Judy Matott, the person who asked the first question about reading the bill:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cDon\u2019t think so,\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The Congress did this bass-ackwards. They passed it before they sold it to the public. Of course, they didn&#8217;t know what was in it because they hadn&#8217;t read it. But hey, it&#8217;s all good, right?  Please, future congressmen, please take not of this fiasco, and don&#8217;t make this same mistake. I shouldn&#8217;t even have to say this, but, please, know what you&#8217;re passing before you pass it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>UPDATE: <\/strong>\u00a0Fellow blogger and law student David Shraub of <a href=\"http:\/\/dsadevil.blogspot.com\/\">The Debate Link<\/a> has offered a very worthy counterpoint to the &#8220;didn&#8217;t read the bill&#8221; complaint. He may have won me over:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>No no no. ALL bills are impenetrable. There is literally no piece of legislation you could ever open up that would not be impenetrable, because bills are written in legislative language, which isn\u2019t like normal, comprehensible English. That\u2019s because the purpose of a bill isn\u2019t to explain what it contains. The purpose of a bill is to amend, substitute, replace, rewrite, or otherwise modify US Code to accomplish the desired policy ends. These two goals (clearly articulating the bill\u2019s contents, and modifying US Code) are completely incompatible with each other. It would be folly to try and use tools designed to accomplish the latter in order to achieve the former (and vice versa).<\/p>\n<p>Hence, the \u201cexperts\u201d here aren\u2019t lobbyists, they are experts in turning policy language into legislative language&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>I think it\u2019s silly when people try to dress up substantive objections into procedural ones \u2014 and particularly profoundly silly procedural objections which fall apart for anyone who knows anything about the legislative process (and, since I assume at least some Senators and Representatives do know something about that process, isn\u2019t a total hack). Laws are complicated. Laws that do a lot of things are\u00a0<em>really<\/em> complicated. That, if it is a sin, is a non-partisan one. And there is no other way to write a bill in which the bill text would clearly tell you what the bill does.<\/p>\n<p>To be clear \u2014 we should know what legislation does before it is voted on. I don\u2019t dispute that at all. But \u201creading the bill\u201d doesn\u2019t accomplish that end. It\u2019s a slogan, not a solution to anyone who actually knows how Congress operates.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking as someone currently in law school, being a lawyer doesn\u2019t really train you for this sort of thing (there are folks who specialize in this sort of thing, but it isn\u2019t all lawyers). I can parse legislative language given enough time and access to Lexis, but simply \u201creading the bill\u201d wouldn\u2019t tell me, or really any other lawyer, anything. Again, that\u2019s not their purpose. They\u2019re not designed to be illuminative regarding the bill\u2019s contents. Even if you are trained in reading legislative language, they\u2019d still be really ineffective at serving that purpose. It\u2019s not a matter of getting the requisite experience, it\u2019s a matter of understanding what legislative text is supposed to do. It\u2019s supposed to modify US code. That\u2019s its only purpose.<\/p>\n<p>(Maybe a better analogy would be telling someone to \u201cread the programming code\u201d if they want to understand how a computer program works. Yes, technically, it\u2019s the primary source, but binary isn\u2019t really designed to communicate information about its contents. You read the\u00a0<em>manual<\/em> for that. The bill itself = the programming code. I don\u2019t want Max Baucus reading that. I want him to read the manual.).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, is this &#8220;didn&#8217;t read the bill&#8221; stuff much ado about nothing? Dave has me leaning in that direction as far as that criticism goes. But, I still stand by my assertion that this bill is a mess, makes the health care system worse, and never should have been passed.<\/p>\n<p>PS. Then again, the ever brilliant Ed Schultz was able to read the bill and understand it with no problems, apparently.<\/p>\n<p><object width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/EC3XxN0pdkg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/EC3XxN0pdkg?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"640\" height=\"385\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Can%20Of%20Worms%20-%20Opened%21%20%20UPDATE...%20Closed%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>Senator Max Baucus, the guy who is acknowledged to the the &#8220;author&#8221; of the nearly 3,000 page puss saturated band-aid also known as the Health Care Reform bill, in response to a question of whether he actually read the final HCR bill, said this at a recent town hall: \u201cI don\u2019t think you want me [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3725"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3755,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3725\/revisions\/3755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}