Harry Reid Won’t Commit to Giving Public a Week to Read Health-Care Bill Before Senate Votes on It
When even the so-called “leaders” in congress admit they don’t know what they are signing I do believe it is time for some one to take action. I am emailing my Congressmen with the quote below and asking that the Senate take action to vote in new leadership.
Reid confessed at his Thursday news briefing that he did not have “a lot of time” to read the 1,071-page stimulus bill before voting on it in February.
He was unapologetic, however, about the way Congress rushed that bill through before it could be reviewed by senators and the public, and declined to commit to giving senators and the public at least a week to read the final version of health-care reform bill before calling a vote on it.
“We have been putting things online. We’re doing so much more than we did just a year or two ago, so I think there’s no secrets, we try to be as upfront as we can, give everyone as much opportunity as we can to move forward,” he added.
The final text of the stimulus bill was posted on the Web site of the House Appropriations Committee late on the night of Thursday, February 12. Both the House and Senate voted on the 1,071-page bill the next day–not providing enough time for members to actually read the bill.
During his campaign, President Barack Obama promised that Americans would have five days to review all bills before he signed them into law.
We should demand that this be done and that the law require that it be the final version of the bill that is posted. Too often pages and pages of ‘who knows what’ has been added to bills at the last moment. This was done to the Cap and Trade bill this week. It left committee as a 934 page bill and ended up on the House floor to be voted on as a 1200+ page bill. the 300 extra pages had been added just the night before. We have seen from the stimulus Bill how dangerous this is as even tiny print in the footnotes can, and in thius case do, hold time bombs. BB
Thanks for the info and cross posting my cap and tax post!
Lonely Conservative, I thank you for permitting me to post your work on my site for my readers. BB
This bill (HR 3962) has been posted online since October 29th and is due for an up-or-down vote Saturday, November 7.
Looks like a week to me – and this is only slightly different than HR 3200, which has been available to the public for months.
Sit down and read it – there’s nothing in there to hurt anyone (unless you own stock in Blue Cross, UHC, Aetna, etc etc).
This bill, when passed, will reduce the deficit, cap patient copays, make insurance discrimination illegal, and close the donut hole in medicare presciption coverage.
Any horror stories you’ve heard about it are propaganda.
READ THE BILL!@
Sir I have read both bills that are posted on line. I will admit however that I did have some difficulty understanding a much of it (I have a post graduate degree) but the parts I did understand scared the stuffing out of me.
If you will read any of my posts you will see that they are all referenced. I don’t “listen” to horror stories; I read and study informed sources and the actual bills. And by the way, NO we have not seen the final bill as it is being changed daily and will continue to be changed right up to the moment of voting. I remember too well the 300 extra pages that were added to the Cap & Trade Bill in the wee hours of the morning before the vote was to take place. I remember the 500 extra pages added to the Stimulus Bill at the last moment but then no one read this bill either—not even the Congressmen who voted for it!
You READ THE BILL Mr. Ebbing.
Oh, and thank you for visiting my blog. BB