Posted by
Unperson on Saturday, August 01, 2009 2:00:00 AM
I recently read a series of comments on The American Thinker entitled "
What to Ask Your Congressperson about Obamacare". There are seven articles with 25 questions for which one would offer to one's congressman either during a townhall forum, on the phone or in a written missive, either through email or snail mail, depending on one's inclinations. I read these questions silently, at first, and then aloud to myself and was struck by just how difficult the language of this bill is. Each question begins with a detailed referencing of a section of the bill followed by a question based on the provisions stated (I'm struck at this moment by how reading this information has me modelling my writing after the fashion of legalese). In reading them aloud, I found myself stumbling over words and zoning out, asking myself what the heck I just read. While I get a general sense of the legislation being offered and the questions that arise out of the specific sections of the legislation I find it difficult to bring any sort of natural expression or understanding of what's being offered here. It is my beleif that were I to read from the legislation at a townhall forum and proffer the questions as they are written that everyone attending, including my congressman, would be at a loss as to what the legislation meant as well as how the question relates to what I just read. Think about that for a minute.
This brings up a couple of points. It is clear, by now, that John Conyers doesn't read the legislation that he votes into law. I wonder how many other elected officials don't read what they vote on. On Tuesday of this past week
Joel Achenbach on the blog Sweetness and Light reports that about 180 members of Congress attended a 2 hour seminar followed by a two hour question and answer session covering, I'm guessing, a general overview of the plan. What's striking here is not so much that legislators are attending a seminar on legislation that they were going to vote on before the voters started reading the legislation themsleves, but that legislators rarely, if ever, have attended seminars on major bills that they vote on. This is particularly noteworthy considering the 2 other major pieces of legislation that have been introduced by the Obama administration. Both, as with the healthcare bill, were introduced with the admonishment that failure to act quickly would result in devastating consequences for the people of the United States. This particular tactic was used by a departing George W. Bush, who wanted to save the free market by abandoning it, and instituted with verve by an incoming Barrack H. Obama. I would assert that this tactic was not unfamiliar to Obama, coming as he does from the Chicago political machine. For Obama supporters, rushing legislation for the benefit of Americans must seem like a truly altruistic act. For the rest of us, though, it sounds more like "don't read it, just sign it!" Thus, while legislators have had to come up with creative reasons for not reading the legislation that they are voting on, Obama has given them a reason, so now they don't even have to be creative. As an aside, the rush to advance legislation to prevent negative consequences, absent the ability of legislators to read and understand what they are voting on, makes possible another and greater set of consequences that could prove way more debilitating than allowing events to procede as they may. This is another reason I think that an effective government does very, very little.
I'd like to make another point. It bothers me that people like me and others who are concerned about the laws introduced onto the floor of the house and senate have to do the job that our representatives should be doing. It pains me to see that only an outcry from the citizenry can force these people to start looking into what's being offered by way of legislation. Not only should our representatives be reading these pieces of legislation, they should be understanding them. By understanding, I mean, take the law as it is written and attempt to visualize it as it is being practiced. Does it actually benefit the population at large, or does it only serve to increase the holdings of a small percentage of individuals? What does it look like when you punish people for not abiding by the law you have created? If such a law is enacted, what will it look like in 10 years or 20 years or 100 years? If the law is enacted and it doesn't work out, is there a way to undo it? There are certainly a number of enacted government programs that can be used as a template while asking these questions. Just go to the original legislation and see how the law is faring now.