Full Text Available
The full text of House’s health care bill is available here.
This bill is over 6,600% larger than our founding document.
Yes, six thousand six hundred percent larger than the Constitution of the United States of America.
UPDATE @ 2:17 p.m. EST
Link at House Committee on Rules
Link at Open Congress
October 29th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Thanks for posting the link.
What’s the deal with the comparison to the US Constitution? The constitution was drafted as a short, broad outline for running the country.
You read the entire bill (did you?), and your sole comment is that it is 6,600% larger than “our founding document”, the US Constitution?
Newsflash: The US Constitution is a quick read. It was meant to be. Nobody said the US Constitution is the “ultimate law of the land”, but that it is instead meant as a framework to build a country.
What do you expect? Should it be shorter? Maybe we should write laws and instead just hire more judges to interpret solely the constitution in every case?
Are you f’ing kidding me?
Seriously, I am perfectly happy to have a good intellectual debate about the HCR bill, but when you stake out preconceived notions of how long the bill should be (especially comparing it to a non-legislative document), it immediately stakes out a position that starts from the absurd.
Pulling data from this site:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/hrm/browse_109.html
Jefferson’s Parliamentary manual (1801), traditionally used by the US Senate, is roughly 50% longer than the US constitution, just considering full text. If you count by sections (articles), it is about five times “larger in scope”. This document only pertains to legislative procedure, yet is considerably larger than the US Constitution.
The current rules of order of the US House of Representatives is roughly six times larger than the entire US constitution, in a text-for-text comparison. This document only covers the rules of order of the US House of Representatives.
The US Constitution delegates powers of legislation to the bodies of the legislative branch for a reason: Because it acknowledges that it is not, in fact, a document laying out the absolute law of the land. That’s also why it is Article I of the constitution.
I had a great talk with Chris and Mike the other day at b-dubs, and I was hopeful that this would result in intellectual discussion on issues and reality.
I’m sorry, but it is hard to argue up from the preconception that a bill shouldn’t be “6,600% larger” than the US constitution. By what rationale? I think that the inference that the bill has no business being “over 6,600% larger than our founding document” demands at least some backing up rationale before it deserves to be taken seriously.
In my opinion, that’s like me arguing that no car has any business being colored green/yellow, because that’s the color combo used by a John Deere Tractor/Mower.
October 29th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
oops. html fail.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:17 pm
@ Coleman
This bill was released today. I have not had the opportunity to read/digest it yet so I cannot comment on its content yet.
It takes a while to read 2,000 pages of standard text let alone legislative text … remember that legislative language will likely reference other legislation which may reference other legislation (therefore, we may need to read as many as 10,000 pages to understand the impact).
Regarding the size comparison – I understand and accept that any bill will be longer than the constitution, but 6,600% is a bit excessive.
October 29th, 2009 at 5:22 pm
Rush read some of the tax legislation today and it was absolutely the most obscure financial jargon imaginable and would require several tax attorneys and a magic 8-ball to interpret.
October 29th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
Its also double spaces with alot of white space. Put in a novel form like The Warren Report and it wou;d only be about 200 pages.
October 29th, 2009 at 10:47 pm
Why not some REAL change.
Lets try writing laws and budgets line item by line item, instead of this normal legislative crap.
Is is too elementary to have a simple two column budget? (boys in Washington get paid too much to stoop that low I guess)
Heck, that is how I manage my finances at home. I always seem to stay out of the RED.
There is no reason something should be that long.
October 30th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Thank you Chris and Jack. Great info. It helped put things in a clearer perspective for me.
Nice try COLEMAN. Jump on one little issue, the size of the bill in comparison to the Constitution, and try to muddy the water. Didn’t work. I don’t think ANYBODY has read the bill and I think I can say for a fact that none of our elected officials have. But it IS your right(for now) to free speech. Now back under your rock.
October 30th, 2009 at 9:02 am
Best way to start getting out of the RED. End the War in Iraq and Afghanastan.
Priorities people.
October 30th, 2009 at 10:00 am
Will, Obama and the rest of the socialists have no intention of getting out of the RED.
October 30th, 2009 at 11:11 am
@Will, @Justin:
Don’t forget that legislative text also contains wide margins (it’s formatted for 5″ wide text pages), and line numbers.
The entire point of it being so gratuitously white-spaced is so legislators and aides can mark up prints by hand.
Mainly @Justin:
Anyhow, I don’t think that 2,000 pages is excessive for a bill that covers a broad swath of necessary legislative reform and oversight for one of the largest and most complex segments of our national economy. In addition, much of it is meant to consider numerous (and some times contradictory) state laws that span the country, which currently govern a lot of health care. This is one of the reasons that competing across state lines hasn’t been allowed: to ensure that residents in a particular state are being served by companies governed under the rules that those same people voted for.
Back to my point: You’ve stated again that you believe it to be “a bit excessive”, but still haven’t justified that point, provided what you think a “reasonable” size is. It basically sounds to me that you want to find something to gripe about, but don’t want to find it in the bill, so you find it by just looking at the bill, not in the bill.
October 31st, 2009 at 8:47 am
@coleman @will
I am a bit perplexed at your responses… The purpose of the post was to provide information – full text of the bill. We are way off topic with the size of the bill … it is an observation.
Clearly I have concerns – I believe the Federal Government can help by allowing interstate sale of insurance and instituting tort reform; I believe the State Governments can offer coverage for their citizens if they deem it appropriate. (Ironically if the Federal Government had allowed interstate sales of insurance I believe Article I Section VIII could be argued).
I plan to read through as much of the bill as possible this weekend. I don’t believe it would be appropriate for me to comment on a bill before i read yet.
Coleman’s previous meeting with Mike/Chris demonstrated respect and intellectual honesty. I know that Will is working with them about a future date.
Perhaps we should try another method of communication – meeting, email, phone? You call it.
October 31st, 2009 at 1:21 pm
You need to actually read up on allowing interstate sale of insurance. They did it in MA and it lead to the minimalist of savings.