Louise Slaughter Admits No One Read New Budget Bill

by JASmius



This is news?  We've had nothing but annual continuing resolutions for at least the last four years, each one of them thousands of pages long.  How could anybody cram that much and retain anything betwixt their ears?:

“There’s some things I think I really have to say about this, mostly process, 1,600 pages right here” Slaughter said as she gestured toward the bill. “Released in the middle of the night. Not one member of the committee has been able to read all the way through it or anything of it, I suppose. No opportunity for public input. No hearings. No committee markups. And no time to adequately consider $1.1 trillion in spending.”

Slaughter went on to note, correctly, that “this process goes against all of the transparency pledges that House Republicans themselves have made.”

Of course you know that if Democrats were in the majority, she wouldn't be publicly admitting this, right?  But because the GOP is (ostensibly) calling the shots, she feels free to score a few process points by lamenting the very opaque process she helped to create.  Indeed, the irony here is that irrational Republican fears of another government shutdown have empowered Donks like Representative Slaughter (D-NY25) to dictate passage of just such gargantuan spending bill (because Speaker Boehner needs Democrats votes) whose contents nobody knows but everybody doubtless suspects, and which pre-empts half of the 114th Congress's fiscal and budgetary prerogatives.

This, of course, is not how the budget process is supposed to work.  The White House and Congress are supposed to draw up respective budgetary blueprints, and then put together appropriations bills Cabinet Department by Cabinet Department, so that everybody knows what's in each department's bill, and therefore Members know what they are voting for or against - and the voting public as well.

If I were in Congress, I would have no choice but to vote against any bill that was functionally unreviewable, no matter what it was.  If they wanted my vote, they'd have to slow down and break down the process and tell me and my staff what was in it.  Period.

Which explains, among many other reasons, why I'm not in Congress.  The incoming Republican majorities would be well-advised to restore that transparent process beginning on January 9th, and stick to it going forward.

Exit question: Couldn't the next Congress simply repeal this CR and put a restored budgetary process in its place, complete with the absence of O's illegal amnesty funding?  John Boehner and Kevin McCarthy have to be re-elected to their leadership posts, after all.