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US Representative Justin Amash tweeted:

For half a year, congressional leaders refused to put any legislation on the floor to be considered AND scrutinized AND amended. Now, they release a 5,593-page bill with no opportunity to read it, let alone amend it. No responsible legislator should vote for such a thing.

https://twitter.com/justinamash/status/1341096266428784644

The bill in question is inferred to be the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.

Focusing on the claim about the bill...it is true that congressional leaders released a 5,000+ page bill without opportunity to read or amend?

Rick Smith
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Paul Draper
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    Same point from AOC seems to confirm. – Jontia Dec 22 '20 at 07:09
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    My impression is that this is true for all (or most) recent Appropriations Acts. I remember hearing this same complaint several times previously. – Bobson Dec 22 '20 at 07:54
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    It's a frequent complaint; though last time it was just 479 pages. – Panda Dec 22 '20 at 08:04
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    In 2018 it was "only" some 2,200 pages, but there was no Covid stimulus then. Also debating time was pretty short. "Approximately 17 hours after the 2,232-page bill was released, the House of Representatives passed the bill 256–167 on March 22. [...] The Senate passed the bill 65–32 after midnight on March 23." So, I'd say this is/was fairly common practice in recent years. – the gods from engineering Dec 22 '20 at 09:25
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    There is now a Wikipedia page for the bill, Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021. – Rick Smith Dec 22 '20 at 13:51
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    @Ryan_L - That would not change much. Bills are complicated and precise, so it takes a lot of space to enumerate everything. One could divide a large bill into many small bills, but the time it would take to read those small bills would probably be just as long. Note that even though no congressperson can read a 1000 page bill, their staffers can, and they can tell them if anything in the bill needs closer attention. – Obie 2.0 Dec 22 '20 at 17:56
  • There is a change there though. With the 50-page limit, the 1000-page bill requires 20 votes to pass, not one. It's a lot harder to justify a yes-vote with "The general topic was too important to argue about every detail." when a bill is only 50 pages. – Ryan_L Dec 22 '20 at 18:09
  • @Ryan_L That just opens things up to gamesmanship. Get the parts you like voted on and passed first, then flip them the bird and refuse to pass the rest of it. Bills balloon like this because politicians want a lot of things passed, and almost no "single issue" bill will ever appease a majority of a party, or even the whole chamber. Most of your 20-bills-that-used-to-be-one-bill will never pass. Combining them is what makes things palatable to a majority/party: take enough steps forward on what you like, and a few steps back on what you don't like doesn't matter so much. – zibadawa timmy Dec 23 '20 at 02:44
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    @Ryan_L, every couple years Rand Paul proposes legislation around that. Latest was a Senate rule for one day advance filing for every 20 pages. So you can have a 300-page bill; you just have to file a couple weeks in advance. You couldn't have 5000-page monstrosities. – Paul Draper Dec 23 '20 at 02:49
  • @zibadawatimmy "Most of your 20-bills-that-used-to-be-one-bill will never pass." That doesn't seem like an inherently bad thing. If those bills wouldn't pass on their own, why should they pass at all? As for worrying about gamesmanship, this totally-unrelated-rider nonsense is already gamesmanship. – Ryan_L Dec 23 '20 at 02:55
  • @Ryan_L People love to complain about congress getting nothing done already. Imagine now that congress only does a tenth of what it does now. It's also how one has to deal with modern party dynamics. Primarily, if you are the "leader" of the majority, then you cannot rely on the minority to pass a piece of legislation: otherwise in what sense are you leading the majority? So you need enough people within your own party to form a majority in the entire chamber, and with usually fairly thin margins and great diversity, that's a tall order: hence combo bills. – zibadawa timmy Dec 23 '20 at 03:00

1 Answers1

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Yes, and this sort of thing is unfortunately rather common in the US Congress. It results from a divergence between theory and practice:

In theory:

  • Bills are (mostly) written by legislators.
  • Debate periods are used to try to convince other legislators to vote for something.
  • If there's a problem with a bill, it's fixed by amendment on the floor of the chamber.
  • The actual decision making process largely plays out on the floor of the chamber.
  • Legislators independently decide which bills to vote for or against.
  • Each bill covers one subject.
  • Votes may succeed or fail.

In practice:

  • Bills are (mostly) written by aides and/or lobbyists.
  • Debate periods are used to convince the public that the other side is wrong. The rest of the chamber is usually empty, unless a vote just happened or is about to happen.
  • Problems with bills are fixed by re-drafting or in committee, long before it reaches the floor. Amendments are either last-minute fixes that got missed in committee, substitutions (where a whole bill is replaced with an entirely different bill, to bypass some red tape which would otherwise apply to a brand-new bill), or political grandstanding.
  • The legislative chamber is a set piece. The actual decisions are made behind closed doors by legislators and lobbyists negotiating with one another.
  • Whips tell legislators what to vote for, and they usually listen.
  • Each bill covers as many subjects as are necessary for it to pass. Extra terms will be added or subtracted as required to convince individual members of Congress to vote for it.
  • Votes rarely fail because the majority leader of the chamber does not allow the bill to get to the floor if it won't pass.

As a result of these practicalities, all of the necessary decisions have already been made by the time the bill is released, and there is no practical need for legislators to actually read or (try to) amend it. It already has a majority and will pass; the vote is a formality. This is bad, because it makes the process much less transparent to the American people. Unfortunately, it's how Congress operates, particularly with regards to "must pass" legislation such as the budget.

agc
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Kevin
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