How do they know exactly what they're voting for?

[Clu-Me-In]

Lately I’ve been reading so many stories about Congress men and women voting for bills without reading them - particularly the wording of bills that sometimes makes an otherwise good citizen a felon or bills that will cost us all billions and maybe trillions of dollars?

Isn’t that why they were sent to Washington?

Weren’t they sent there to make law, write them examine them through debate, come to a compromise, read the final bill before passing it on to the President to be signed into law?

Do they have any mechanism for reading these bills before voting “yea” or “nay” that we’re not aware of?

For all they know, they could be voting into law that any Congress man or woman who does not read a bill before voting on it has committed a crime.

[Sage_Rat]

They have staff. Sometimes they’re simply told which way the party is voting. Ultimately it comes down to the people in the parties who actually care about that issue. Most legislators only have a few particular issues that they personally care about and they go along with everyone else on the other issues because a) they don’t personally have the knowledge to really debate anything, and b) so they can get enough favors to get everyone on their side to vote the way they want on their personal pet issues.

People who are knowledgeable about and care about the issue vet the contents of the bills. Having a few hundred legislators going over everything with a comb would be a pain in the butt.

[Magiver]

So what’s the difference between a member of congress voting blindly and a monkey in front of a type writer besides the obvious fact that we’re paying the salaries of our elected officials?

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

Similar to what Sage Rat said, I have been told by a friend in a State Legislature that

“unless I know something about an education bill, I just look and see how X is voting – she’s our party expert on education – and I vote the same way she’s voting.”

And he said for almost any general area, he knew who the expert was on that area. In some areas, there were more than one: on a land use bill, x was the environmentalist expert, y was the farming expert, and z was the hunting expert.

[Clu-Me-In]

@t-bonham@scc.net

Similar to what Sage Rat said, I have been told by a friend in a State Legislature that And he said for almost any general area, he knew who the expert was on that area. In some areas, there were more than one: on a land use bill, x was the environmentalist expert, y was the farming expert, and z was the hunting expert.

Seems like that simply is not doing the job they were sent to Washington to do. We might as well then find experts in all fields of importance and let them make the laws.

[Clu-Me-In]

@Sage_Rat

They have staff. Sometimes they’re simply told which way the party is voting.

We didn’t vote for their staff, and in some cases the party line isn’t always beneficial to his/her constituents, are they?

@Sage_Rat

Having a few hundred legislators going over everything with a comb would be a pain in the butt.

Whose butt? The people that sent them there or the folks who wrote the bill he/she didn’t read before voting on it?

[racer72]

I worked for a state congressman back in 1990 during the legislative session in my state. There were 6 of us in his office whose job was to read the bills and write an outline in 2 pages or less. This applied to the bills that did not go through the committees that he was a member. He already knew those bills inside and out. He would take the stack of outlines with him at night, by the next morning they were returned and if he had any questions about any bill he marked that part of the outline in red. Only about 25% of the bills submitted actually made it to a vote of the complete house, others were killed in various committees or were withdrawn. I all cases I would say the elected official likely has a pretty good idea of what he is voting on.

[Cerowyn]

@Clu-Me-In

Seems like that simply is not doing the job they were sent to Washington to do. We might as well then find experts in all fields of importance and let them make the laws.

But don’t forget that people are voted in on ideological grounds. So, you need to find the expert who also espouses the same political stance as the party, and hope they’re charismatic and driven enough to get elected. Or, you could find someone who’s already got the politician thing down pat, and then let them become an expert on the fields that match their experience/interests/whatever. Which is what it essentially sounds like is happening.

Any nation, in particular one as big and as complicated as the United States, is going to have so many complex issues to deal with that it is impossible for any one individual to become very knowledgeable about every piece of legislation or motion that needs to be passed for the country to thrive. If Congress is going to deal with even an acceptable bare minimum of issues, a system similar to the one in place is going to be necessary.

[Giles]

I don’t find it at all troubling. Congress-critters are not super-beings: they are relatively ordinary men and women. In addition, like the rest of us, they only have 168 hours in an average week, and some of that time has to be spent asleep. So they have to prioritise – for example, by getting good on a particular policy area, and helping other congress-critters in that area – and depend on others for help with other policy areas. So you rely on someone from your point on the ideological spectrum having scrutinised everything that goes before Congress, and bringing to your attention the parts that are particularly troubling. It’s simple teamwork.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@Giles

I don’t find it at all troubling. Congress-critters are not super-beings: they are relatively ordinary men and women. In addition, like the rest of us, they only have 168 hours in an average week, and some of that time has to be spent asleep. So they have to prioritise – for example, by getting good on a particular policy area, and helping other congress-critters in that area – and depend on others for help with other policy areas. So you rely on someone from your point on the ideological spectrum having scrutinised everything that goes before Congress, and bringing to your attention the parts that are particularly troubling. It’s simple teamwork.

While increasing the number of hours in a week is not feasible, increasing the number of weeks Congress is in session is. They do, what, four months’ work?

[Giles]

@Really_Not_All_That_Bright

While increasing the number of hours in a week is not feasible, increasing the number of weeks Congress is in session is. They do, what, four months’ work?

Members of Congress are not working only when Congress is in session. Having said that, there may be ways to get bills scrutinised more, which might involve the Congress being in session longer, or might involve other changes in congressional procedure. For example, having a longer time that bills are made public before they are voted on might improve public debate on them.

[friedo]

@Clu-Me-In

We didn’t vote for their staff, and in some cases the party line isn’t always beneficial to his/her constituents, are they?

You didn’t vote for Robert Gates or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, either. Do you expect the President to formulate all military policy himself?

Politicians have advisors because they can’t possibly be experts in everything they’re expected to know about. In Congress, and especially in the Senate, most members specialize in areas of interest that usually align with their committee assignments. On other issues, they’ll ask their staff, or follow a party leader. Yes, some are lazier than others and probably should do some more reading themselves.

[Little_Nemo]

Do you expect your Congressman to answer his own phone and write his own letters? The Congressman’s job is to act as a representative, set policy, make the big decisions, and accept the final responsibility for what goes on. But he’s going to delegate a lot of the work to other people. And that includes reading a hundred page long bill. He’ll have his staff read it (or write it if that’s the case) and make sure there’s no surprises hidden in the details.

[BrotherCadfael]

@Magiver

So what’s the difference between a member of congress voting blindly and a monkey in front of a type writer besides the obvious fact that we’re paying the salaries of our elected officials?

The monkeys at least have a chance of banging out Hamlet.

[Chronos]

This is also a legitimate role for lobbyists. If there’s a bill up before the legislature that you think has objectionable implications, then you and a group of like-minded citizens can tell your elected representatives through various channels “The bit in this bill about ____ clearly erodes our right to ____, and there’s no justification for passing this bill if that part isn’t taken out”, or “This law would be unenforcable, becuase it requires the government to do ____, and that isn’t possible”, or whatever. And no matter how obscure a topic is, there’s always going to be somebody in the country who cares enough about it to read the legislation and write to their senator about it.

[Clu-Me-In]

Let me bring your attention to this… article I read that prompted my questions… It has to be concerning to any citizen out there to note that much of the bills that are passed can have stuff sneaked onto them without anyone knowing what the law is or being responsible for puting it there… read on and I apologize that it is long…

Baird’s op-ed was in response to a particularly embarrassing episode, in which someone inserted a provision into the recently passed omnibus spending bill which would have allowed for the staffs of the Republican finance committee chairmen to examine any individual American’s income tax returns.

The language understandably provoked outrage from privacy and civil liberties advocates. The funny thing was, after the bill passed and that language became law, no one in the Republican party — not Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, not the bill’s sponsors, not the finance committee chairman — seemed to know how the language got there.

A cynic might say that the Republican leadership tried to sneak into law language that would enable them to snoop into the finances of their political enemies, and that they’re only feigning ignorance because they’ve been caught. But I’m not sure the less ominous explanation — that not a single Republican in the U.S. Senate actually read the bill all the way through — is any less embarrassing.

As Baird points out, the four most important bills from the last Congress — which totaled over 2,900 pages and spent over $1 trillion of taxpayer money — were only available to members 48 hours prior to voting. That’s pretty much par for the course in Congress. Baird goes so far as to write that “[t]here is now an inverse relationship between the importance of legislation and the amount of time members have to study it before voting.”

The Patriot Act, for example, weighs in at 340 pages — svelte by federal legislation standards. Yet the Senate was given just three days to read the bill before voting on it (and approving it 98-1). And just two days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Sen. Orrin Hatch found a pending appropriations bill due for a vote, and tacked on a slew of amendments that served as a kind of precursor to the Patriot Act — again, giving the Senate no time to actually read and contemplate them.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140204,00.html

[rbroome]

@Clu-Me-In

We didn’t vote for their staff, and in some cases the party line isn’t always beneficial to his/her constituents, are they?

Whose butt? The people that sent them there or the folks who wrote the bill he/she didn’t read before voting on it?

It would be simply impossible for the elected officials to read the bills they vote on. And even more impossible for them to understand the bills. Some of these bills are 1500 pages long. If all 100 senators stopped and read that one bill, in a good year they wouldn’t get a chance to vote on anything else or hold any hearings or help any constituents. It would be like asking the chairman of IBM to personally read every line of code produced by the company. And 90% of them wouldn’t understand it if they read it. We hire our representatives to go to Washington, hire staff that do have the time and expertise to read and understand the bills (actually they have the time and expertise to write the bills, the reading is probably done by junior staff-if anyone actually reads the entire bill) and to make sure that the bills don’t violate the principles that we sent that representative (liberal, conservative, Democrat, Republican, etc) to support.

Expecting a senator or congressman to read, say a spending bill, is unreasonable and a waste of time.

[XT]

Sounds more like a debate that a question, but pretty much what Nemo said. That’s what a congressional staff is for. A congressman is like a general. They set out broad requirements and formulate strategy (with the help, again, of their staff), and it’s the staffs job to read through the mountains of paperwork and present summations…which are what the congress-critters DO read, by and large. If they are good congress-critters then they probably read through more thoroughly the things that have a more direct impact…but simply put no one would have the time to slog through everything.

And I’m the last person who would defend a congress-critter of any stripe.

-XT

[Glazer]

For example, having a longer time that bills are made public before they are voted on might improve public debate on them.

Excellent idea! The final draft of every bill should be posted online for public review. Unless time is a critical factor. Then require a super majority to wave the public review period. Then if your congressman passes a bill after your objections you can hold his feet to the fire come next election.

[Backcountry_Medic]

I think all of this apologizing for lazy congressmen and women is pathetic. We voted for them to go to Washington and make the laws (understanding them is a basic part of making them). If they have trouble actually reading what they are voting on they should have the decency to attempt a solution. They could start by working more often: i.e. not having a four day weekend most weekend, working more than half of the year- 183 days for the senate, 118 for the house in 2008, working longer days.

They could open the bills longer for reading and debate, they could pass legislation to limit the number of pages a bill could be, pass legislation for bills to stay “on-topic” so they don’t get filled with 1500 pages of junk, give bills a two week no-add-ons period before the vote so nothing gets tacked on at the very end, ect.

Would you accept it if your doctor came to you and said “Sorry, you medical record is way too long to read, but I had a couple of flunkies you’ve never met look over it and some of my doctor friends thought it sounded good to start you on all of these meds. Sure, there are couple in there that I’m not sure what they do, but basically it should all be okay. I hear what you’re saying about you’re saying about that last mix-up with the aspirin and your stomach ulcers, but it’s kinda out of my control, I can’t honestly be expected to know every aspect of every single patient’s history, and it was really the pharmacist’s fault anyways, he was the one who actually gave you the medicine, i just recommended it to him. He always has the power to veto it if it seems like a bad idea. Now you’ll have to excuse me, while I would love to spend more than two minutes with you, I’m incredibly busy- I have a two hour cocktail lunch with my partners, I have an investor meeting to raise money for building myself a new office, I really need to put in some time at the range to get ready for my golf tournament this weekend and also I’m going to a four star restaurant tonight- paid for by the same people who make all of those meds you just got. One last thing- I just decided to give myself a big pay raise, since I’m such an awesome doctor, so you’re fee today is double.”

The problem is that congress is happy to do a half-assed job, and that by and large, it seems like many people forgive them for it. My .02, get your ass to Washington, put in a solid 40 hour week-every week, leave commencement speeches, library openings, party meetings, media interviews and caucus lunches for your weekends or nights (if you still feel you must do them) and do the job you were elected to do. Or sit there as an unpaid figurehead, let us vote for your underlings and get the hell out of our democracy, if you don’t care that much.

Here’s the 2008 Congressional Calender. Pathetic.