There was an interview posted a couple of days ago with Senator Tom Carper about the legislative text of the health care reform bills currently being debated in Congress. It’s quite enlightening about just how dysfunctional the Congress is.
“I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life.”
If legislative language is confusing for a lawmaker, then why is he a legislator? Oh, that’s right, Congress doesn’t actually legislate – that’s the job of Congressional aides who, unlike most Congressmen, can actually express a coherent thought. The lobbyists who have an interest in any given bill are certainly a big help in writing bills too.
“We, we write in this committee and legislate with plain English and I think most of us can understand most of that.”
Most Congressmen can understand most of the plain English? This implies that there’s some plain English they don’t understand, and Carper certainly has a problem speaking plain English!
“Senator Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day and I don’t think anybody had a clue–including people who have served on this committee for decades–what he was talking about.”
A Congressman finally admitting that Congress doesn’t have a clue! And the American voters’ response? Silence, with a cricket chirping in the background.
“…legislative language is so arcane, so confusing…and it’s just, it really doesn’t make much sense”
How are the American people supposed to obey the dictates of the laws Congress enacts, if even those writing the law consider it arcane and confusing?
“The idea of reading the legislative language: It’s just anyone who says that they can do that and actually get much out of it is trying to pull the wool over our eyes.”
Ergo, anyone in Congress who votes for this legislation is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the rest of the country!
“They might say that they’re understanding it. But that would probably be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. It’s hard stuff to understand.”
Hope of change in one hand, Washington bullshit in another – see which one fills up first!
“I use it to like, for example, credit card disclosures. If you actually read the stuff, you say, you read it and say, like dozens of pages: ‘What does this say?’ And this is one of the reasons why we’ve directed, among others, banks to use plain, plain language, plain English to explain what they’re doing, so that the gibberish, you can’t read it and really know what it says.”
This is one major reason I have no credit cards (Congress allowing credit card companies to charge extortionate interest rates is the other). I really doubt that if a credit card company presses it’s claim on your debts in the court system the “plain language” is what will be considered by the court. If Congress makes health insurance mandatory, I won’t have the choice to just say no like I do with the banks’ credit. If Congress can pass a law to require the banks to use plain language, why can’t they do the same themselves? Most importantly, how can anyone compare credit card language to health insurance language? Does this guy truly believe my credit score with the banks is more important than my health? Well, in looking at his bio, Mr. Carper is an economist, so it should come as no shock that his view of reality is just a tad skewed.
“If people who work here on a daily basis and work with the legislation and shape the legislation…maybe it doesn’t make much sense for either the legislators or me to read that kind of arcane language. It’s just hard to decipher what it really means.”
It makes perfect sense to me: The “incomprehensible and arcane” language is what will be made into law. That’s the language that has to be interpreted by the folks who will implement your reforms and the folks who have to enforce the laws. If the people creating the legislation can’t understand the laws they are enacting, how is any body else down the road supposed to? Isn’t this an example of “triumph of man’s hope over experience?”
The Interviewer asks if the legislative language will be available for the American people to read. Response: “Why that is a value and why someone should need to read that, or feel the need–I don’t understand…”
If you don’t understand thr value or the need for people to read the version that will be made into law that has to be followed, then you don’t understand the point of having law – and you certainly don’t understand justice. Is the health reform legislation going to have a plain English version ordered by law? NO! In essence, you’re voting on different legislation than what you’ve read and debated in committee.
In the accompanying article, it was noted that “Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who also serves on the committee, said the descriptive language the committee is working with is not good enough because things can get slipped into the legislation unseen.”
That’s exactly what happened with the bank bailout a year ago. It didn’t pass in the house, the senate took it and added all sorts of pork barrel riders and passed it, then the house took the senate’s version and added even more riders, and they were happy and passed it so Bush could then sign it into law as the largest Christmas tree bill ever.
It really is a crying shame that 99% of Congress is so afraid of rocking the boat by making any kind of principled stand to do the right thing that they can delude themselves so completely as Mr. Carper has.
Tags: Congress, Health Care Reform, Tom Carper
nice. Very nice… XD