Leadership

Senenator Thomas Carper (D.-Del.), a member of the Senate Finance Committe, says he does not plan to read his committee's health care bill before he votes on it.

CNSNews.com reports that, Carper, a member of the self-proclaimed world's greatest deliberative body, explained, “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." Carper says he will "probably" read a summary of the bill, written in simpler language, rather than the bill itself.

The reporter goes on to explain that Sen. Jim Bunting (R-Ky) proposed an amendement that would have required the final text of each proposed bill to be available for 72 hours before the committee held its final vote. Last week committee defeated the amendment by a 13-10 vote.

Carper compared the full legislative language of the bill to credit card disclosure documents that he described as “gibberish,” meaning that “you can’t read it and really know what it says.”

When asked if Republican members of the committee should have a chance to read the full text of the bill if they believe they are capable of understanding it, Carper suggested Republicans would only pretend to understand the bill when in fact they would not understand it. “They might say that they’re reading it. They might say that they’re understanding it,” said Carper. “But that would probably be the triumph of man’s hope over experience. It’s hard stuff to understand.”

Carper said if Americans were given the chance to read the actual text of the bill he believes they would decide that it made little sense for either them—or members of Congress—to read such texts because of the difficulty in understanding them.

“I think if people had the chance to read that they’ll say you know maybe it doesn’t make much sense for either the legislators or me to read that kind of arcane language,” said Carper. “It’s just hard to decipher what it really means.”

(CNSnews.com). To sum up, Sen. Carper says that the actual language of the bill is too confusing to be understood by his fellow Democrats, Senate Republicans, or the American people. Clearly it should be passed right away!

Oddly enough, according to Politico, Sen. Carper is currently trying to push his own "moderate" health care plan. No telling if he's actually read it.