Senator Rand Paul gave a scathing rebuke of Senators on Friday voting on bills that they have yet to read. As evidence of what he was saying, he held up a what looked like an entire ream of paper and declared, “For goodness sakes, a six hundred page bill and I got it this morning. Not one member of the Senate will read this bill before we vote on it.”
Just how sure was Paul that no one would read the bill he waved in the air? “We’re going to vote on it in the next thirty minutes,” he declared. He then said that the Senate’s own rules say that bills have to be posted online for at least 48 hours before being voted on and that he and others will object to the vote.
“Six hundred pages. No one will read it,” Paul said. For that matter, even with the Senate rules of 48 hours, who is going to read 600 pages? Senator Paul exclaimed, “No wonder our approval rating is ten percent. Nobody knows what we are voting on. In fact, things have been stuck in this bill last night that have nothing to do with these bills and they’ve been stuck in and we’re just now discovering it.”
He pointed to an example of two Senators in a rush to get something out and into the bill that effects their states just minutes before. Paul stated, “Had they not found out about it, nobody would have known about it.”
The Kentucky Senator then laid out three bills “in question.” The transportation bill, the student Loan bill,
He points to the student loan bill and says that the federal government was using the six percent charge on student loans for Obamacare. Now it’s at three percent. He asks where is the money going to come from to make up the difference. He called the process a “shell game” and rightly so.
Senator Paul then said that the government will pay for Obamacare by taking money out of pensions. He even asked the Senate to ‘raise their hands’ if they though it was good to underfund pensions more. Paul then pointed out that more than half of the pensions in the country are technically insolvent.
Paul then stated, “I have a bill in Congress that says we should read the bills before we pass them.” Who can disagree with that? Furthermore, why has it come to the point that a sitting Senator has to push a bill that demands that representatives of the people do their job and read bills before passing them? The bill says that representatives should wait one day for each twenty pages of the bill.
The Senator once again called on the Senate to at least follow their own rules of posting bills online and even with that Paul said it would be a challenge to understand a six hundred page bill. To add to the reading of bills Paul pointed to the federal register, which has 55,000 pages added to it annually. He noted that not only does one have to read the bill, but then must reference the federal register as well.
He then took a shot at Democrats and blasted them for not producing “a budget in three years. That’s against the rules,” Paul said. “When we presented them with their own budget that we wrote for them, nobody voted for it,” Paul said.
Senator Paul was definitely frustrated as he asked, “How are we going to get to compromise if they don’t show up for work? How are we going to get anything done if they don’t obey their own rules?”
“I’m discouraged by this. I will raise a point of order in the next hour that says ‘We have broken the rules of the Senate’ and I will ask them to vote on it.” Paul also said he hoped the Parliamentarian would rule in his favor.
He mocked the Democrats as he stated that they would ignore the point of order and the rules and just declare that they are in the majority and they deem it so.
Well I’m glad to see Senator Paul stand up and point the finger at the other side and say what they really are and what they are doing. I applaud that. We need far more representatives in the Senate and in the House that care what bills are passed and what is in them. We don’t need everything but the kitchen sink slammed into bills. These things should be streamlined and made much more efficient to deal with, but then that wouldn’t work would it? Because every representative would then have to do without their special slice of pork.
Thank you Senator Paul, because even though you are not representing me in my state, you are representing what I think.
