A Little bit of Perspective

A lot of talk has been going on lately about the health care bill that has been going through congress. Our president and his supporters have been pushing very hard to get this bill passed as soon as possible. "What's taking so long?" they complain, "this is the right thing to do, so lets just pass it!" they yell. If you are at least somewhat familiar with the process that our congress has for passing law, you know that each bill must be read before the house of representatives and the senate before being voted on. At least, that's how it is supposed to go. According to the Senate library, the average length of a typical statue passed by the 109^th Congress was 15 pages. That is a bit long, but manageable reading for a senate/house meeting. The current senate bill measures in at 2,074 pages. To put that in perspective, here is a picture of two of the computer certification books I am reading right now stacked together. Combined, the two books are 1,904 pages long, and measure at about 4.5" thick, for 7.5" x 9" pages. Take a look and see if you think that there is justification for complaint about how long it takes to pass this bill. Anyone want to volunteer to read it?