On Thu, 20 Aug 2009 07:58:45 -0700, wrote:

On Aug 19, 10:47Â*pm, "Brenda Ann" wrote:
I want to know what is so difficult about reading a 1000 page, double
spaced, single sided bill, when your kid can read 1000 pages of Harry
Potter in under a week (double sided pages, in much smaller print, and
single spaced). Â*And BTW, it's their JOB to read these bills. We don't
pay them to make stupid remarks on television.
That is not what I learned from my high school Social Studies teacher.
We were taught that the House and Senate were subdivided into
committees. Legislators were expected to be expertly knowledgeable only
about the bills reported out of their committees, not all bills. The
"READ THE BILL!" rablle rouserrs are just displaying their own stupidity
and ignorance.

Legalese is a pain in the ass to read. But the representatives have
staffs that "report out" the honest version in plain talk and that is
what the representative must read. There is probably a group that does
this for each caucus. The representatives also have at least two other
jobs in addition to understanding the bills. One of these is to do all
that can be done on a bill such as HR 3200 to educated the people as to
the actual contents of the bill and the purpose of the bill. And the
other duty is to ascertain the thus educated will of the constituents.
Our current system fails in these last two important areas much more than
if fails in the requirement to "read the bill".

IMHO a NON PARTISAN agency such as The Congressional Research Service
should put the English encapsulation of a bill as important as HR 3200 on
line for all to read. The administration should not be forced to put this
encapsulation on line due to the lack of a NON PATISAN service. And this
truthful encapsulation of the bill is what should be the subject of any
PUBLIC debate.

The link below illustrates the concept and at present but is woefully
inadequate to the required task:

http://opencrs.com/document/R40517/

Here we see a discussion of the various tax proposals that finance the
extension of insurance to the lower income folks who cannot currently
afford such insurance.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_b...8/crs-tax.html


But I am of the opinion that HR 3200 is _THE_ current bill that has been
reported out of the House committees and that CRS should offer a PLAIN
TALK assessment of that bill.

--
"Those are my opinions and you can't have em" -- Bart Simpson