Nothing rankles the political principles of Rand Paul like a bill rushed through Congress.
When the Senate rushed the Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act, he berated lawmakers for not taking the time to read and debate the bill.
“This bill came here on Tuesday. It’s 180 pages long. It involves new criminalization, new crimes that will be created at the federal level. It includes preemption of states. It includes a new federal regime which would basically supersede regulations – or lack of regulations – in Louisiana, or Texas, or Oklahoma,” Paul said, according to Red State.
“It deserves to be read, to be understood, and to be debated,” he said.
Many bills have the same trajectory: slap on a nice-sounding name, bundle all sorts of related and unrelated rules, and get it off the docket before legislators have the time (let alone the desire) to consider it.
“I just want to read the bill,” Paul said. “Every day in my office, business comes into my office, and what do they say? ‘We’re regulated to death. We’re sick and tired of regulators from the executive branch that are out of control’ … We should think through how we are going to do things around here,” he continued.
The complaint isn’t a new one. Under President Bush, Democrats led the fight against rushing through bills without enough time to contemplate its effects. Then, when President Obama took over in 2009, the roles reversed.
Occasionally, attempts are made to pass a law requiring legislators to read bills before passing them, but that has failed thus far.
“If you must be responsible for obeying and funding every word of every law Congress enacts, then every member of Congress must be responsible for reading every word of every bill before they vote to enact it,” Downsize DC wrote in its argument for a “Read the Bills Act.”
Until a similar bill passes, the responsibility to keep members of Congress accountable falls on other legislators.
