Now Even the Lawmakers Can't Understand What They Propose...

by j. wright - October 3, 2009
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In the wee hours of the morning last Friday, the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Senator Max Baucus, (D-Montana) completed the mark up of their proposed health care reform bill. The committee has been working with what is described as a “conceptual” version, or one prepared in common sense language. It had been given in part to the their staffers, lawyers, who converted it to legislative language before an upcoming floor vote.
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This is a portion of a quote from Senator Tom Carper (D-Del.): “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. We, we write in this committee and legislate with plain English and I think most of us can understand most of that. When you get into the legislative language, 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.”
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There was more but perhaps you get the gist. The Senate Finance Committee is the same committee that voted down a proposal to have the bill placed on the Internet 72 hours before an up-down vote takes place on the floor. Senator John F. Kerry, (D-Mass.) indicated it would be too confusing. Was he implying that the average American is too stupid to understand words?
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What I don’t understand is how the Obama Administration and the leftist Democrat legislators react to national polls concerning the public’s seeming disfavor with the Afghanistan conflict, yet totally ignore more conclusive polls concerning widespread opposition to major health care overhaul. Am I one of those average Americans Senator Kerry was speaking about? Maybe so but I do understand words.