Courtesy of Patterico we have a video of Democrat Senator Tom Carper telling us that it's unreasonable to expect legislators to actually read the laws they write. I am not kidding. The language, he says, is incomprehensible so lawmakers simply read the summary of the bill which is written in prose more befitting a congressman's reading comprehension skills. Carper says in the video:
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. . . . When you get into the legislative language, Sen. 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 had served on this committee for decades, what he was talking about.
This is inexcusable. If the language is so turgid that it cannot be understood, even by legislators who went to law school, then do what any sixth grader would realize you should do and change the language. Here's the video:
I have three questions: If the "English" version is an accurate summation of the "legislative" language why not just write the law in plain English? Second, if Senators like Carper, most of whom are lawyers, cannot understand the legislative language how do they know that the summation accurately represents it? Third, how can anyone justify voting for a bill that will revolutionize the American economy, as health care reform will do, if they don't understand the bill and haven't read it?
This strikes me as almost criminal malfeasance. We don't send these people to Washington to advance their social life and attend cocktail parties. We pay them a very handsome salary to read the legislation they foist on us. If this is how they operate these people should not be in office, they should be in jail.
RLC