Politicians have NEVER read bills. That’s one of their dirty secrets. They never read the PATRIOT Act either, nor did they read Hillary’s health care plan. No one ever reads anything in Congress. They’re morons. They pay their staffs to read them and give them summaries. You think Michelle Bachmann could read and comprehend Green Eggs and Ham, much less the Stimulus Package? The fact that they don’t read the bills is true, and is sad, but is nothing new, and not a very interesting or arresting observation.
Franken’s tax thing was small potatoes. His accountant didn’t pay income tax in some states where Franken had done gigs. It’s the kind of thing that plagues a lot of touring entertainers who have to rely on paid professionals to keep track of what taxes they’re supposed to be paying where. Franken corrected the problem as soon as he was made aware of it. It was truly nothing, and certainly not any kind of intentional fraud. Even in Minnesota at the height of the election cycle, that story barely raised a yawn.
Bush II admitted to pot use? I thought he had brushed off all questions of his prior substance use as “gottcha” questions and given “no comment” type answers.
I don’t know the clips in question, but John Stewart “admits” to lots of things on his comedy show that are probably not real. Why couldn’t he just shrug it off as comedic exaggeration? He’s playing a character, not writing a tell-all.
Given that the only way we could possibly know whether legislators read bills is what they tell us, does anyone have a counter-cite that says that they don’t?
He had reported all his income, and paid taxes on it, in Minnesota, where he resided, even though some was earned in other states. The fix was to report the income and pay taxes in all those states, and file an amended Minnesota return, listing only his income in Minnesota.
But because some of those states had lower tax rates than Minnesota, he ended up paying less taxes overall. (Though the increased accountant time probably used up much of that savings.)
Dunno if there is a clip on Youtube, but Rep Conyers is on camera in Fahrenheit 9/11 saying that Congresspeople often don’t read the bills, or at least don’t read them closely, before voting.
It seems fairly obvious, just from the size of the bills. If you total up the pages of all the bills passed by Congress in a month, there just isn’t time enough for any single person to have read all those pages – not even the fastest speed-reader in the country.
I don’t have a GQ cite, but my mom was a politiical journalist for years who personally knew several Congressmen and Senators, and she told me that it was routine for staffers to provide summaries rather than for Congress critters to actually read all the way through the bill. During the Hillary Care circus, she complained that she and other journalists covering the story were the only ones who had actually read the plan. My mom read it cover to cover, which is something I don’t envy her for. I doubt I could get through 3 or 4 pages.