Failed Leadership: Dem Lawmaker Admits ‘Nobody’ Read $1.1 Trillion Spending Bill Before Passing it -

This Shows how our paid leadership does their job!

On Thursday, the House passed the $1.1 trillion spending bill that increases government spending by $44.8 billion and the Senate voted overwhelmingly to approve the spending bill on Friday. This reaffirms that our government is presently uncommitted to controlling spending.  

While that fact may be galling enough, it is the fact that our representatives in Washington don’t even bother to read the bills for which they vote.

In fact, on Thursday, Oregon Democrat Representative Earl Blumenauer scoffed at the idea that anybody would read the bills before they voted for them.

CNSNews.com asked Blumenauer: “The omnibus bill yesterday, it was 1,582 pages, did you have a chance to read all the pages before voting on it?”

Blumenauer laughed and said: “Nobody did!”

“Nobody did?” asked the reporter.

“Nope,” said Blumenauer.

We all have jobs to do. Accountants have to crunch numbers, contractors have to build things and, as crazy as it may sound, representatives have to educate themselves on pieces of legislation before voting for or against them! I hardly think that that is an unreasonable request for Americans to make!

To be clear, I don’t only blame the politicians for their failure read the bills; our criticisms as Americans must serve as an indictment of the dysfunctional nature of government.

Nobody did read the bill because nobody could read the bill. Honestly, what legislator has the time to sit down with a tome that 1,582 pages long, read it, understand it and then make an educated decision on whether to vote for it or not?

At 1,582 pages, the spending bill is a monument to government dysfunction. Of course, spending is a complicated issue and we cannot expect it to be a brief read; however, government simply must begin to work simpler.

We need government to operate with less money; we need government to operate with less bureaucracy; we need government to operate with less paperwork and for legislators to get back to the basics of legislating based on what’s good for the American people.

Nancy Pelosi once infamously noted that we needed to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it.” When we did that, we became saddled with a 7-foot-tall piece of awful legislation, filled with insane government bureaucracy and hidden provisions.

Now, because the prevailing mantra on Capitol Hill is, “Don’t think, just vote,” we are saddled with a spending bill that increases our government spending at a time when our national finances are an absolute mess. 

- See more at: http://www.tpnn.com/2014/01/17/failed-leadership-dem-lawmaker-admits-nobody-read-1-1-trillion-spending-bill-before-passing-it/#sthash.7rMjPtyJ.dpuf