That would be like telling my team of developers I need to personally debug all their code. A senator is just a leader of a team. If you don’t trust your team to execute on your vision you need better staffers.
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I don’t think it’s the same comparison. The point is that hundreds of people are contributing to this, and then it becomes a final bill, and everyone is voting on without knowing the content that others contributed. It’s not about trusting your team, it’s about trusting the over 100 other people who were allowed to throw their nonsense into this. Do you really just all agree to blindly vote yes so that you all get your piece?
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They get a redlined version. They don’t re-read 2000 pages every time it’s edited.
None of them have read the whole thing in it’s entirety regardless, I’m not suggesting they need to read it all every time, but that theres no way possible anyone has ever read it all.
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Which is how it always is. But, you can bet their team of staffers/lawyers have.
Edit: unless they’re not needed for passage. Those voting yes know what they’re voting on
Doesn’t make it right. The idea of legislators passing legislation without reading it is a mind boggling fact of Washington. No, I don’t believe there staffers will have read it all before passing it.
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I’d be more concerned if they weren’t deferring to the experts employed by Congress to write, read, summarize, and explain the bills. I’m pretty sure some of these newer legislators can’t read/write.
I don’t think you understand how many highly educated people they have at their disposal. Not just their own staffers but those that work for the entire house, party, or committees who are experts in their respective fields. Any good leader knows how to delegate and rely on the expertise of their employees.
With all that said they don’t blindly vote yes on these bills. Have you ever looked at an actual bill? 2000 pages is really like a normal 4-500 page word document which wouldn’t take that long to read in its entirety. They’ve been working on this bill forever and each new draft would have changes highlighted and text stricken showing exactly what was added and what was taken out and they would be briefed on the changes.
Yes, there are people voting blindly on these bills. I view blindly as anything less than knowing every provision they are voting for. I understand who is at their disposal, that doesn’t mean that every member actually knows all of what they are voting for. You see it over and over again, people get interviewed on what is in the bill and besides top-line items they have no clue.
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As an interesting aside, I’ve gotten into a few debates in the 4xe groups lately over if the 4xe is covered by the ev credit or not because the official gov summary of the bill has the wrong information. Can’t even trust their own summaries to cover the bill.
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Well you can’t really expect them to memorize it. They would read it looking for anything they didn’t agree with and would rely on their team to call out any issues.
That’s interesting. Could be an old summary since it seems like they’re constantly changing it.
Edit: looks like the summary hasn’t been updated by CRS since September.
No, it was the corresponding summary to a new release. It was an issue of them combining the summary of similar sections and attaching the more extensive limitations to one very narrow area to a much broader area.
I don’t expect them to memorize it, but when trillions of dollars of tax money is on the line I’d like them to really, really know what it is they’re spending on. Love him or hate him, Rand Paul has been exposing wasteful spending tucked into huge bills by both sides for a long time and it is absolutely enraging to see how our money gets spend with such reckless abandon. Calling out issues would be ideal, but we all know that isn’t how congress works, I doubt all the dems love the idea of having to defend to their voters why they voted yes on amnesty for millions of non-citizens, but the horse-trading is such you you support my provisions, I’ll support yours. Everyone gets a piece.
You call it horse trading, I call it compromise. A great man once said, “a good compromise is when both parties are dissatisfied.”
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Most of his findings are his slanted opinions of what he thinks are wasteful spending. I’d be more convinced if he actually did more digging and figured out who championed to get it there and what the proposed benefits are supposed to be. And - did it miss the mark?
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I almost referred to it as such, but those members represent real people, and what you wind up with is not just congress members being dissatisfied, but millions of Americans, and that is no way to govern.
There will always be people unhappy. I’m not sure what your solution is. Have them legislate the way you want, so there is a different group of millions unhappy? That’s what elections are for.
He put’s out a fairly extensive report, and while you might disagree with some of what he thinks is wasteful, most of it is stuff that most people would agree with, not just partisans. Most of what he exposes is money being spent in other countries so that our politicians can play kingmaker across the world, or bureaucratic waste within our own system.
For example:
- private sector “Green Growth” in Peru - 10 mil
- Taught Lao to Laotians - 20 mil
- Improved the quality of TV in Moldova - 2 mil
- Studied frog mating calls in Panama - $466k
- Attempted to increase trust between Tunisian political parties and citizens (State) - 2 mil
As I said, I am not talking about partisan points and disagreements, I am talking about letting senators and house members play king or queen of foreign nations with no direct benefit to the american taxpayer who is funding it.
Exactly this. He just puts bullet points in his report. I want to see the actual bills that these were a part of or were they science and education grants that don’t need congressional approval.