OK Im trying to understand this...

[Double Trouble]

With regard to not posting the bill for the world to see, it's basically an admission that it's really really bad -- so bad that it could not possibly stand any real scrutiny or the light of day, it has to be hidden and pushed through as quickly as possible. Once it gets passed, it can safely be disseminated it because the damage to the country can no longer be undone.

That, and we can add that to a long list of lies and promises broken by the Obama admin. So much for transparency and openness in government, that stuff is only good when it's the other party. When it's a terrible bill the dems are trying to push, secrecy to avoid scrutiny is just fine.

This piece of legislation will impact every single person in the country in terms of life and death and have a definite impact on their quality of life. It needs to be the most thoroughly studied, analyzed and scrutinized bill ever, but instead, the offenders want to push it through in a hurry in secrecy. Wake up folks, it's time to kick out the critters in congress. Remember this stuff next year when it comes time to vote, remove the bad congressional reps.

 

[cubeless]

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Originally posted by: cubeless

ok... i surrender... i was of the, obviously mistaken, belief that this was discussing the fact that the changes/amendments to the posted bill were not to be posted...

that seems to be the original bill... is it actually being annotated in something like real time? i don't see timestamps...

http://energycommerce.house.go.../hr3200_anssummary.pdf

Cheers!

No sarcasm this time around because this one's buried a bit deeper

For future reference, go to the relevant committee, click markups, then find the date of when it happened.

thanks for the gentle treatment... but damn... you have to be friggin' indiana jones to find this shit and rubik to sort it out to make sense out of it...

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: Double Trouble

Originally posted by: eskimospy
It's difficult to decide among the blizzard of retarded responses who to call an idiot first.

I never said that legislators should only have 10 minutes to look at a bill.
I never said we should just trust politicians because they are experts.

I never said that there shouldn't be time to peruse the bill before it was voted on, simply that posting it up on the internet for people who style themselves to be legislative geniuses to foam and froth incorrectly about isn't very important to me because I find it highly unlikely anything useful will come of it, and highly likely that a lot of stupid things will come of it.

If this board shows anything, it shows just how retarded the average American is when it comes to politics and what they think they know. I mean this place is supposed to represent those who are at least nominally interested in politics and the sheer amount of misinformation and absolute absurdity that is taken as 'fact' here is mind boggling. There are already plenty of groups both partisan and nonpartisan who evaluate the language in these bills to give you an understanding of what it's actually about, and despite everyone's high level of legal and policy knowledge you're almost certain to miss the various interactions between statutes or misunderstand the language, nefarious or not.

What I'm worried about has been shown to be absolutely true in the last few months as people have repeatedly been whipped into a frenzy about things that aren't even in the bills under consideration.

I'm not against releasing the bills to the general public, I just don't care much either way. There are plenty of other groups that fulfill the function of what you're going for.

Thanks for that post, I think from now on when someone wants a good definition of "elitist", I'll just refer them to your post. That attitude of "the ruling class is smart, the peasants are just rubes that need to be kept in the dark lest they misunderstand our brilliant ideas" is exactly what people refer to when they call someone "elitist".

I don't think legislators understand legalese any better than the rest of us (unless they're sitting in a library with two copies of the CFR open next to them)

Here's an example:

Wonk Off! - The Senate Finance Committee has just cast its first vote of the day, and the claws are already out. Senator Jim Bunning had an amendment requiring the bill to be translated into legislative language and for the CBO to post a cost estimate based on the new version 72 hours before voting. It's a proposal that would delay the vote by at least 2 or 3 weeks....

Unlike other committees, the tradition of the Finance Committee is to provide the bill in plain English to its legislators so they can have a more transparent grasp of the substance of the legislation. After a vote is passed, the bill is then translated into legal language, and any discrepancies between the two are resolved in favor of the plain English interpretation.

Rising to defend plain English bills was Kent Conrad. "We write our bills in plain English so the members can understand them, and so the public can understand them?To most people, legislative language is gobbledy-*****." Conrad then proceeded to give an example of exactly what such "goobledy-*****" would sound like. Speaking in a droning, robotic monotone, Conrad read off the section of the bill that discussed how a certain "section K-1" would be "determined under Paragraph Two for the area of the month, IV," with the "applicable amount as defined in the subsection K1 for the area for the year?for the area for the month in 2013 so determined by national per capita growth area."

Conrad's legalese drew some giggles and guffaws from the crowd. This prompted Bunning to try and brandish his wonkish cred by trying to translate the legalese back into plain English. "You're talking about home [health care] providers in metropolitan services areas that include parts of CMS," Bunning responded....

"The Senator thought the language had to do with home health--It had to do with Medicare Advantage," Conrad responded triumphantly. "Members of this own committee thought--they don't know what the legal language is about."

 

[alchemize]

Love the partisan hacks (primarily eskimospy and heyheydumbshit) defending this, oh my how things change in a few short months!

 

[PokerGuy]

Originally posted by: alchemize
Love the partisan hacks (primarily eskimospy and heyheydumbshit) defending this, oh my how things change in a few short months!

They would have been ranting and raving about the evil Bush and his secret government... but now it's their heroes doing it, so they contort themselves into a pretzel trying to defend the indefensible.

 

[heyheybooboo]

Originally posted by: PokerGuy

Originally posted by: alchemize
Love the partisan hacks (primarily eskimospy and heyheydumbshit) defending this, oh my how things change in a few short months!

They would have been ranting and raving about the evil Bush and his secret government... but now it's their heroes doing it, so they contort themselves into a pretzel trying to defend the indefensible.

Ahhh ... more lazy semi-literate name-calling bums who need to be spoon fed.

Of course, you can not be bothered to educate yourself. That would take too much personal responsibility.

At last check there were 833 specific pieces of legislation in the current Congress related to health care.

Committees in the Senate and House have approved around one dozen substantial pieces of legislation that will be the basis of the complete health care legislation, in addition to any other parts of those 833 specific pieces of legislation related to health care that have passed committees or readings on the floor of Congress.

Obviously, you have chosen to remain ignorant and lazy. Good luck with that.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo

Originally posted by: PokerGuy

Originally posted by: alchemize
Love the partisan hacks (primarily eskimospy and heyheydumbshit) defending this, oh my how things change in a few short months!

They would have been ranting and raving about the evil Bush and his secret government... but now it's their heroes doing it, so they contort themselves into a pretzel trying to defend the indefensible.

Ahhh ... more lazy semi-literate name-calling bums who need to be spoon fed.

Of course, you can not be bothered to educate yourself. That would take too much personal responsibility.

At last check there were 833 specific pieces of legislation in the current Congress related to health care.

Committees in the Senate and House have approved around one dozen substantial pieces of legislation that will be the basis of the complete health care legislation, in addition to any other parts of those 833 specific pieces of legislation related to health care that have passed committees or readings on the floor of Congress.

Obviously, you have chosen to remain ignorant and lazy. Good luck with that.

ZOMG - 833! You mean they would have to past 833 documents to a website? I bet that would bring the whole intertubes down! Plus 12 more? They might even have to name them uniquely, and version them? It would be complete anarchy!

 

[heyheybooboo]

Hey, Genius:

"" There are literally hundreds of pieces of legislation, parts of which may be incorporated into the final bill. If YOU are interested go to THOMAS, type in 'health care' and read to your heart's content. ""

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: Double Trouble
With regard to not posting the bill for the world to see, it's basically an admission that it's really really bad -- so bad that it could not possibly stand any real scrutiny or the light of day, it has to be hidden and pushed through as quickly as possible. Once it gets passed, it can safely be disseminated it because the damage to the country can no longer be undone.

What a load of rhetorical horse-shit.

 

[alchemize]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Hey, Genius:

"" There are literally hundreds of pieces of legislation, parts of which may be incorporated into the final bill. If YOU are interested go to THOMAS, type in 'health care' and read to your heart's content. ""

Yes, you've posted that multiple times now. So what's your opposition to the final bill being posted again?

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: heyheybooboo
Hey, Genius:

"" There are literally hundreds of pieces of legislation, parts of which may be incorporated into the final bill. If YOU are interested go to THOMAS, type in 'health care' and read to your heart's content. ""

As long as parts of Congress are discussing pieces that could be included in the final version, the public should have access to those for review.

When a package comes out of committee, thenthat package should be labled as such.
when all packages are out and the appropriate branch of Congress has approved (but not read), then that needs to be published and labeled.

Finally, the joint package that is to be sent up (sometime in the far future) should be published for review.


A minimum time for public feedback is needed for each version out of Congress and the final - Say 3-5 days.

 

[FuzzyBee]

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: cubby1223

Originally posted by: bl4ckfl4g
I think I understand why they don't want to be held to 72 hours. If they need to act earlier or change their minds on when a bill is to go to the floor, this is just extra red tape in the way of a normal process.

It's because they know the bill is largely incomprehensible and will hurt public support allowing them to read it before the vote. That's why this amendment was basically a strict party-line vote. Hey, the same applies to pretty much every bill that is created and voted upon, regardless of which letter holds the majority.

This. The entire idea of posting up bills for people to read is largely nonsense anyway. Has anyone here tried to read and understand a bill in it's actual legislated form? It's pretty damn hard, and the amount of footnotes, etc are incredible. (that's why these bills are 1,000 pages. It's not that there are 1,000 new pages of regulations, it's that it takes that much paper to correlate it with other laws, etc.)

While I appreciate people's desire to see the bill, and I also understand that the Democrats promised this, I think the entire idea is foolish. What's going to happen is another explosion of insanity from right wing crazies that read sections of the bill they don't understand. This is how we got 'death panels' and the like.

So I guess bad on the Democrats for promising something and not doing it, but it was a dumb promise to make to begin with.

Do you think that the members of Congress are the smartest people in the country? If there aren't any US citizens that can comprehend these bills, how can Congressmen comprehend them?

 

[TheSkinsFan]

Wonk Off! - The Senate Finance Committee has just cast its first vote of the day, and the claws are already out. Senator Jim Bunning had an amendment requiring the bill to be translated into legislative language and for the CBO to post a cost estimate based on the new version 72 hours before voting. It's a proposal that would delay the vote by at least 2 or 3 weeks....

Unlike other committees, the tradition of the Finance Committee is to provide the bill in plain English to its legislators so they can have a more transparent grasp of the substance of the legislation. After a vote is passed, the bill is then translated into legal language, and any discrepancies between the two are resolved in favor of the plain English interpretation.

Rising to defend plain English bills was Kent Conrad. "We write our bills in plain English so the members can understand them, and so the public can understand them?To most people, legislative language is gobbledy-*****." Conrad then proceeded to give an example of exactly what such "goobledy-*****" would sound like. Speaking in a droning, robotic monotone, Conrad read off the section of the bill that discussed how a certain "section K-1" would be "determined under Paragraph Two for the area of the month, IV," with the "applicable amount as defined in the subsection K1 for the area for the year?for the area for the month in 2013 so determined by national per capita growth area."

Conrad's legalese drew some giggles and guffaws from the crowd. This prompted Bunning to try and brandish his wonkish cred by trying to translate the legalese back into plain English. "You're talking about home [health care] providers in metropolitan services areas that include parts of CMS," Bunning responded....

"The Senator thought the language had to do with home health--It had to do with Medicare Advantage," Conrad responded triumphantly. "Members of this own committee thought--they don't know what the legal language is about."

Brilliant! :laugh:

 

[ElFenix]

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Originally posted by: cubeless

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Do I have to hold your hand through every step?

click.JPG

ok... i surrender... i was of the, obviously mistaken, belief that this was discussing the fact that the changes/amendments to the posted bill were not to be posted...

that seems to be the original bill... is it actually being annotated in something like real time? i don't see timestamps...

http://energycommerce.house.go.../hr3200_anssummary.pdf

Cheers!

HR3200 isn't under consideration in the senate

 

[b0mbrman]

Originally posted by: ElFenix

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Originally posted by: cubeless

Originally posted by: b0mbrman

Do I have to hold your hand through every step?

click.JPG

ok... i surrender... i was of the, obviously mistaken, belief that this was discussing the fact that the changes/amendments to the posted bill were not to be posted...

that seems to be the original bill... is it actually being annotated in something like real time? i don't see timestamps...

http://energycommerce.house.go.../hr3200_anssummary.pdf

Cheers!

HR3200 isn't under consideration in the senate

The article mentions the House vote.

But for what it's worth, in the Senate Finance Committee, the chairman's mark is already written in plain English: http://finance.senate.gov/site...Future_Act_AMENDED.pdf