Commentary: Will lawmakers pledge to read health care bill before voting?

By Jason Mercier

Special to the PostGlobe

2009 may go down in history as one of the most ambitious policy years in history. First there was the 1,073 page federal "stimulus" bill passed by Congress in February. Then last Friday the House passed the 1,200 page cap-and-trade bill. Next up is the restructuring of the nation's health care sector with current proposals totaling hundreds of pages.

Congress is considering these massive proposals under the direction of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who promised in 2006 to "create the most open and honest government in history," if given power. In fact, she went a step further and said, "Lawmakers must have the opportunity to read every bill before they vote on it. It’s common sense."

With Pelosi running the House, it's safe to assume lawmakers were provided time to read these policy tomes line-by-line before adoption, right?

Wrong.

Both bills were voted on within hours of the final versions being made available. 

Hoping to change this, one citizen group is asking lawmakers to sign a pledge to read and post online for 72 hours the health care bill before voting. As reported by Politico :

. . . Let Freedom Ring, a group that promotes constitutional government and traditional values, has launched a campaign to get all 535 lawmakers in the House and Senate to pledge to not vote on the health care bill (likely to top 1,000 pages) until they have personally read it and the bill has been posted on the Internet for 72 hours.

“People were shaken into a new state of awareness when people talked about the size of the stimulus bill and the fact that, in all probability, no member of Congress or senator had read the bill,” said Colin A. Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring. “That struck people as inherently absurd, almost in the existential, theater-of-the-absurd sense. We all know lots of bills are not read, but sometimes the scope and nature of a bill rises to a different level than everyday legislation.”

 The full text of the pledge reads:

“I pledge to my constituents and to the American people that I will not vote to enact any healthcare reform package that:

1) I have not read, personally, in its entirety; and,

2) Has not been available, in its entirety, to the American people on the Internet for at least 72 hours, so that they can read it too.”

Simple enough. Read the law you are proposing and allow voters the time to read it as well. Seeing how this is supposed to be the most transparent Congress in history, no doubt Pelosi plans to sign this pledge and will encourage her colleagues to as well, right?

Jason Mercier is the director of the Center for Government Reform at the Washington Policy Center. He serves on the Executive Committee of the American Legislative Exchange Council's Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force and is a contributing editor of the Heartland Institute's Budget & Tax News. Mercier also serves as treasurer on the board of the Washington Coalition for Open Government and was an adviser to the 2002 Washington State Tax Structure Committee.