Bills Unread, Duties Undone

The House has passed a 1200-page “climate bill” focused on development of new forms of energy and reducing “greenhouse gas” emissions. The bill will impose extensive regulations on a broad range of activities and on many different parts of the economy, and could have extraordinary long-term consequences for American society.

I admit that I am skeptical about the entire “global warming consensus,” simply because I don’t believe that real scientists try to quash debate — rather, they welcome it, because the process of testing hypotheses is precisely what leads to development of scientific truths. The bill’s acceptance of global warming as a basis for massive regulation, though, is really beside the point. What I find amazing about the “climate bill” is that so many of our elected representatives are prepared to vote for far-reaching legislation that they have not read, to which hundreds of pages of amendments were added at the eleventh hour. How many times have these kinds of last-minute bills been larded with amendments that reflect fundamentally corrupt political bargains and horse-trading? How many pet projects were funded through some unread provision added by a Rules Committee member?

Is it too much to expect that Members of Congress will at least read legislation before they vote on it?   Our Founding Fathers no doubt contemplated that elected representatives would read and understand the terms of bills and their potential consequences before they approved them — and, in this case, committed the nation to abrupt and extensive changes.