Nicholas Ballasy, CNSNews.com: I wanted to ask you if you plan... to read the entire actual text of the health care bill before the committee votes on it.
Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.): I don’t expect to actually read the legislative language because reading the legislative language is among the more confusing things I’ve ever read in my life. We, we write in this committee and legislate with plain English and I think most of us can understand most of that. When you get into the legislative language, Senator Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day and I don’t think anybody had a clue--including people who have served on this committee for decades--what he was talking about. So, legislative language is so arcane, so confusing, refers to other parts of the code—‘and after the first syllable insert the word X’--and it’s just, it really doesn’t make much sense. So the idea of reading the plain English version: Yeah, I’ll probably do that. The idea of reading the legislative language: It’s just anyone who says that they can do that and actually get much out of it is trying to pull the wool over our eyes. From an October 02, 2009 CNSNews article: "Finance Committee Democrat Won’t Read Text of Health Bill, Says Anyone Who Claims They’ll Understand It ‘Is Trying to Pull the Wool Over Our Eyes’.
Remember the controversy about the PATRIOT Act, when our legislators didn't even read the bill because it wasn't available before the vote? How about the similar controversy over the stimulus bill that no one read? Carper's admission explains what most likely happened with those two bills: it didn't matter that our legislators didn't have time to read the bills, because they typically don't read the bills when they do have time.
Former Delaware governor and congressman, and now US Senator and Senate Finance Committee member, Thomas Carper (D), spoke honestly about the limitations of legislators' understanding of the language of the healthcare re-form bill during an interview. Asked about the text of the healthcare re-form bill in the Senate Finance Committee, Carper admits he can't even understand the language of the actual bill, and doubts any other legislators can understand it. Carper's response should give central planning advocates pause:
Ballasy: Do you think Republicans on the committee should be able to read the entire full actual text of the bill?
Carper: I, I--They might say that they’re reading it. They might say that they’re understanding it. But that would probably be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. It’s hard stuff to understand.
Have you ever had to visit a half dozen specialists to get the correct diagnosis for an illness? Or maybe you know someone who needed to see several doctors to figure out how to treat his or her symptoms. Healthcare choices for one person can be complex. Imagine the wisdom necessary to design the operation of a healthcare system for 300 million people. It doesn't seem possible that a small group of people can decide how to do that. How would they even know what each one of those 300 million people wanted and needed?
The 535 people in Congress and the bureaucrats in the executive branch now working to decide how 15% of the US economy is to operate will need godlike knowledge to do their job, yet they're incapable of reading the actual legislation that they plan to inflict on Americans. Unfortunately, the closest politicians get to being godlike is in their imaginations.
Secret Deals Buried in Legalese
The Senate Finance Committee is considering the Baucus Mark of the "America's Healthy Future Act," available online as a 262-page marked-up overview (pdf), written in "conceptual language." The legalese version of the bill doesn't exist, only the overview. Senator John Cornyn (R), also on the Finance committee, said the descriptive language the committee is working with is not good enough because things can be slipped into the legislation unseen:
“We’ve seen that there are side deals that have been cut, for example, with some special interest groups like the hospital association to hold them harmless from certain cuts that would impact how the CBO scores the bill or determines cost. So we need to know not only the conceptual language, we need to know the detailed legislative language, and we need to know what kind of secret deals have been cut on the side which would have an impact on how much this bill is going to cost and how it will affect health care in America.”
Politicians wouldn't lie or use misleading wording in legislation would they? Or perhaps this legalese explains Bill Clinton's obfuscation (video) of the meaning of 'is'?
CBO Scoring
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of HR3200 (pdf) estimates it would add $239 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years. The CBO estimate (pdf) for S.1679, the Affordable Healthcare Choices Act, projects a deficit increase of $579 billion through 2019. Because the CBO estimated the deficit would increase with these bills, the Senate Finance Committee also worked on a version of healthcare "re-form" that would have a better CBO score and be politically more acceptable--one that would reduce the deficit.
An October 7, 2009 CBO analysis (pdf) of Baucus' America's Healthy Future Act, projects it would reduce the deficit by $81 billion over the next ten years. The Baucus bill would increase federal spending by $829 billion, so to reduce the deficit it increases taxes and fees, redistributing wealth from those that have to those who don't.
Since many legislators want increased federal involvement in healthcare, the CBO score predicting deficit reduction is a political green light to the Finance committee to approve the bill for floor debate. It doesn't matter to legislators that the CBO numbers usually underestimate how much federal spending is involved and how much the deficit increases. Or that the projected Senate savings of $81 billion over ten years for Senate Finance chairman Baucus' version is peanuts compared to a budget deficit that increased $455 billion in Bush's last year, and is projected to increase by $1.186 trillion in Obama's first year in office (p. 23 of pdf).
Income Redistribution
That even our legislators can't understand the actual bills on which they vote, gives proof to the lie that our democracy works for anyone but the powerful and a mob that wants only to be taken care of by Big Brother at someone else's expense. A September 24, 2009 CNSNews article: "Obama's Policies Would Redistribute Nearly $1 Trillion in Wealth Every Year," quotes Scott Hodge, President of the Tax Foundation, a D.C. lobbying group, about the wealth redistribution in the US in the next three years:
“Even if none of Obama’s policies becomes law, the extent of income redistribution is remarkable. The top-earning 40 percent of families will transfer $826 billion to the bottom 60 percent in 2012."
All you as a taxpayer really need understand about healthcare "re-form" is that supporters of more federal involvement in healthcare want to decide for you what to do with your money; congressional leaders don't want to post bills online. Senator Carper can't understand why you'd even want to read the legislative language:
Ballasy: Last question for you. If members on the committee, whether it’s Republican or Democrat, want to read the legislative language--if they feel they can understand it--will that language be available? Do you know where that language is? Have you seen any of the language or the full actual text?
Carper: In the time that I’ve spent here, I’ve seen plenty of legislative language and I know more often than not it’s almost incomprehensible as to what it means. Because what you do is you take certain language and you insert it in other parts of the law, other parts of the bill, and it frankly almost defies comprehension in many instances. Why that is a value and why someone should need to read that, or feel the need--I don’t understand. The idea, is actually like, say, I get my credit card disclosure and I have a one or two page summary written in plain English and then I have like 40 or 50 pages written by an attorney or a bunch of attorneys that is almost impossible to understand--Why you would insist on reading the stuff that’s incomprehensible as opposed to the plain English language that’s ordered by law so that people can understand it, that’s beyond me.
Euphemistically-speaking, the federal government wants to "redistribute" your income. Plain English translation: our representatives in Congress don't even understand the legalese of the bills they vote on, but that won't stop them from voting for them, and you'll pay for it.
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"Plain English translation: our representatives in Congress don't even understand the legalese of the bills they vote on, but that won't stop them from voting for them, and you'll pay for it."
It was ever thus. I doubt that our representatives ever read what they voted on. That's why they have, at their disposal, troops of aides, lobbyists, and other translators of legalese who can slip them a little trot.
Besides, politicians have a vested interest in imprecision, doublespeak, evasion, obfuscation, and verbal perversion. As a matter of self-interest and self-protection, they avoid the harsh light of clarity.
In his always-timely essay, "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell notes that "political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible.... Thus, political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness." To think clearly (and, by implication, to write clearly) "is a necessary first step toward political regeneration." (Hardly the goal of our representatives.)
Orwell's advice never loses its relevance. "A scrupulous writer," he says, will repeatedly ask himself certain basic questions: "What am I trying to say? What words will express it...Could I put it more shortly?" Even if politicians were capable of asking themselves such questions, they surely would not be able to answer them.
Finally, the gobbledygook of the Health Bill, like all political language, is designed "to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." That, after all, is the stock-in-trade of blowhard politicians everywhere.
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