The Democrats in the Senate of the United States have rejected an amendment requiring their health care legislation be put online a minimum of 72 hours prior to any Senate vote. The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee has said that doing so is not an option because it would take Senate staffers 2 weeks to get the bill posted to the Web.
In addition to the obvious question of why a 2 week delay is such a big deal when contemplating turning 1/6 of our economy into a government program, one might ask why it should take so long for such a simple activity. There seem to be only 2 possibilities: 1) Senate staff are not competent to copy and paste the bill onto the Internet, or 2) to get the bill ready to be posted would take 2 weeks.
The latter, and more likely, explanation implies that much of it exists only as disjointed, hand-written, perhaps marginal notes and has yet to be “typed up.” That is, it simply isn’t available for anyone to read as a coherent whole. And it won’t be for at least 2 weeks. If the vote is taken as scheduled, not only will no Senator have read it before they vote on it, no Senator could have read it because they can’t possibly get a 72 hour advance on the actual content either.
Unless you count ignorance as representation you are being taxed without it, representation that is. You’re certainly about to be taxed in ignorance.
My concern with this health care reform, as an Independent, is that it’s all over the place, there are not enough specifics and it must be put into writing and as if “written in stone” so that not every illegal that comes to the US will get free healthcare and those that work hard all their citizen life in US pay for every “Tom, Dick and Harry”
John,Today will have been disappointing, then, because the Dems blocked an Amendment that would have required a Photo ID for immigrants.Another thought; If they aren't going to read the bill they're foisting on us, could they at least agree to be covered by it and give up their own special health care plan? No, I didn't think so.