Not One Member of the House Read The Fucking Stimulus Bill Before Signing It! (VID)

LOL... you don't seriously think that they read every bill that comes across their desk, do you? It's politics. They scratch backs and follow party lines and if it's something that they actually care about... then they look into it to make a decision.

give me money, i'l do it

Of course not, but I think anyone that signs a bill without reading it is unfit for office.

actually I agree with what he is saying. Didn't Obama say he was going to open all this up to the public and let them review it before votes were cast and things were signed? We are in such dire straights that we can't wait a couple of days so people have a chance to read the bill and really look it over? I have been hearing that we need to act today every day since mid November. I don't think taking a weekend to read a bill before voting on it crazy.

I also think if they haven't read it they shouldn't be allowed to vote on it.

Yeah, the world will not come to end if it does not get done today. This is the same sort of bullshit they pulled with the Patriot Act

I bet the creators of bills don't even want people reading them... if everyone was "forced" to read bills, I bet nothing whatever be passed. Hey... that may be a good idea.

Of course they do not want people reading them. That is why they make them massive in size and difficult to read and understand. If they were required by law to read and understand what they are signing then over night this bullshit would end.

I agree. imagine if they posted the bill online for 72 hours. The media would tear it apart and show everyone all the wasteful spending that is in it. I think we need a stimulus plan, but I think just throwing money into the economy is not the way to go and that nobody is reading the bill and most probably don't know even 10% of what is in it really troubles me.

And I'm sure there are plenty of people who have snuck some things into the bill that they don't want made public.

ya think?

I have a feeling some people will make a whole lot of money out of this.

Only in America huh...

what's another trillion or two... why read when you can just hope?

There's even handwriting in the bill with crossed out and replaced numbers. Fucking ridiculous!

you're fucked, excuse me we're fucked plain and simple. either take it like a man or revolt, your choice

Where is the outrage from the left?! Everyone American should be pissed about this. The biggest spending bill ever and not one person read the god damn thing?

FUCK THIS SHIT.

They just cant rob us fast enough anymore

Nobody gives a rats ass...

This surprises you how?

There have been plenty of video footage in the past of Congressmen and women admitting as much on other bills as well. Their excuse being something to the effect that they cannot read every bill on the hill.

They did the same thing with the Patriot Act. No it does not surprise me. Yes it does make me furious

Barefootsies seems to be an "it is how it is so what are you going to do about it" type of guy. An apathetic defeatist basically. AKA a typical American.

Funny the Republicans are sniveling about this.

Especially when its pretty obvious that what they did for 8 years non stop is no different. None of them read the bills really. They are provided briefings on key points.

Its not that no one read it and no one was briefed on it...
Each section of that package was written by members of the house, each section is familier to the letter that they are wanting to put through.

Republicans are asses and talk from thier asses 100% of the time. When all else fails... Just lie, distract and call attention to shit that does not matter.

thank you like this is something new. its really funny.

you can read it right here http://appropriations.house.gov/

well the good thing that would happen is if they had to read them all, alot less things would happen in government.

I really have no idea why people fall for the shit the Republicans spew.
Republicans always play on peoples fears, they always try and distract from real issues.

The above clips are perfect examples on how Republicans try and distract and gain the audiences of the ignorant and disillusioned which brings them votes.

No politican read the bills they sign off on unless they wrote it themselves and when others vote on it they are briefed on the key points. Its standard procedure for our government and has been since nearly the beginning. Leave it to the Republicans to play on other peoples stupidity to shake things up.

exactly

If you get all up in arms over every little thing, how are you going to have the energy to fight the really important things?

What is anybody going to do about this? Seriously? There is no "change". People are the way they are. It's human nature.

It's been up for a long time, the revisions are just revisions. It's like reading up on 2257 and each time it's in court they revise it. 99% of it is identical except the revisions.

Nice strategy though, since it obviously has people believing that someone dropped 1000 pages on their desk and said "vote now".

Every little thing? This is one big thing. This is our country we're talking about here. We're on the verge of serious collapse, this is not "getting all up in arms over every little thing."

I think it secretly provides the oil companies with billions, and it secretly provides Haliburton with huge no-bid contracts, and I think it even suggests we invade Iraq under false pretenses! Don't worry though, it also makes sure the richest people get the largest tax breaks, so it's all good!

whoa shit you're blowing my mind here.

The 'Stimulus' bill was a dirty dirty deal.

Hey, Barack!

What's scary is some member of Congress can insert total bullshit into the final conference version and it anally tears up an industry. Correct me if I'm wrong but that bullshit anti-online casino payment processing law was snuck through this way. These are called "riders"

Are you insane?

Even if your accusations against the Republicans were true, it would not justify the massive fraud that is now being perpetrated against the American people.

So, the fact that Obama said this stuff would be held up to public scrutiny before being voted on is totally irrelevant. Cool. Just so we are clear. You know Obama is full of shit but you do not care because the Republicans did it too.

Change baby, it's all about the change.

You get your own reply because you are a special kind of idiot. WTF do you think Obama and the Democrats are doing now? Playing on people's fears.

Wake up.

They are all full of Bullshit...both Dems & Rep, Obama is just the king Bull right now..

Baddog, one of GFY's "elder statesmen", speaks truth. See: The Fierce Urgency of Pork. Ironic, ain't it.

It's been up where? Bits and pieces of it have been floating around the last few days, but you make it sound like the whole bill was done and online for people to read while they fixed some typos. Not true!

The truth is they said they would post the FINAL BILL online 48 hours before they voted to give everyone (including us) a chance to read it. That did not happen. The bill was circulated around Congress at sometime between 11pm and midnight. Less than 12 hours before they voted.

Yeah, exactly.

At this point I am starting to think that it's best if our government spends us into oblivion, crashes the dollar and further destroys the economy. Then maybe the apathetic masses will get pissed off enough to do something about it. Maybe then we will see some real "change".

If I'd get paid enough like them, I would have done the same.

Bingo!

What he said.

Here's the actual article:

The Fierce Urgency of Pork

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 6, 2009; A17

"A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe."

-- President Obama, Feb. 4.

Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared "we have chosen hope over fear." Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.

And so much for the promise to banish the money changers and influence peddlers from the temple. An ostentatious executive order banning lobbyists was immediately followed by the nomination of at least a dozen current or former lobbyists to high position. Followed by a Treasury secretary who allegedly couldn't understand the payroll tax provisions in his 1040. Followed by Tom Daschle, who had to fall on his sword according to the new Washington rule that no Cabinet can have more than one tax delinquent.

The Daschle affair was more serious because his offense involved more than taxes. As Michael Kinsley once observed, in Washington the real scandal isn't what's illegal, but what's legal. Not paying taxes is one thing. But what made this case intolerable was the perfectly legal dealings that amassed Daschle $5.2 million in just two years.

He'd been getting $1 million per year from a law firm. But he's not a lawyer, nor a registered lobbyist. You don't get paid this kind of money to instruct partners on the Senate markup process. You get it for picking up the phone and peddling influence.

At least Tim Geithner, the tax-challenged Treasury secretary, had been working for years as a humble international civil servant earning non-stratospheric wages. Daschle, who had made another cool million a year (plus chauffeur and Caddy) for unspecified services to a pal's private equity firm, represented everything Obama said he'd come to Washington to upend.

And yet more damaging to Obama's image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama's name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.

It's not just pages and pages of special-interest tax breaks, giveaways and protections, one of which would set off a ruinous Smoot-Hawley trade war. It's not just the waste, such as the $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.

It's the essential fraud of rushing through a bill in which the normal rules (committee hearings, finding revenue to pay for the programs) are suspended on the grounds that a national emergency requires an immediate job-creating stimulus -- and then throwing into it hundreds of billions that have nothing to do with stimulus, that Congress's own budget office says won't be spent until 2011 and beyond, and that are little more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.

Not just to abolish but to create something new -- a new politics where the moneyed pork-barreling and corrupt logrolling of the past would give way to a bottom-up, grass-roots participatory democracy. That is what made Obama so dazzling and new. Turns out the "fierce urgency of now" includes $150 million for livestock (and honeybee and farm-raised fish) insurance.

The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington. By the time the stimulus bill reached the Senate, reports the Wall Street Journal, pharmaceutical and high-tech companies were lobbying furiously for a new plan to repatriate overseas profits that would yield major tax savings. California wine growers and Florida citrus producers were fighting to change a single phrase in one provision. Substituting "planted" for "ready to market" would mean a windfall garnered from a new "bonus depreciation" incentive.

After Obama's miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell -- and that this president told better than anyone.

I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...502766_pf.html

Okay... so what are you doing about it?

I wonder how many stacks of paper he held up with Bush's bills that nobody read and pushed through..


It's funny that nobody read it, yet they seem to know that it's full of earmarks & pork..


Nothin' but a show..

AlienQ, You don't really give a damn about anything unless it involves you pushing your party line....

This is the largest amount of federal government growth in the history of the country and you don't care that even your own party members didn't have time to read it?

You don't care about anything but political parties, do you?


That's a shame.

I couldn't agree with you more. The GOP can suck it!