Americans Agree Congressional Bills Too Long and Deceptive

(CNSNews.com) – More than 80% of Americans agree that Congress drafts lengthy, complex bills to hide spending on special interests and to prevent constituents from understanding what's in them before a vote is taken, according to a new survey. According to a Zogby poll conducted last week, 83.5% of respondents agreed at least “somewhat” with the lengthy-bill premise, and 61.2% of Americans agreed strongly. Only 14.4% disagreed, and just 5.8% did so strongly.

The question Zogby asked was: “Some contend that the reason federal legislation is often thousands of pages long is because provisions to benefit special interests can be more easily buried in long bills, and so citizens cannot decipher the legislative language quickly enough to be able to communicate support or opposition to their Senators or Members of Congress before a vote is taken. Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with this opinion?”

Overwhelming support for the opinion came from every age group, race, religious faith and other demographic category, according to Zogby. In each subgroup, at least 50% of the respondents “somewhat” or “strongly agreed” with the statement.. . .  Liberals registered the lowest levels of support, at 66.1%, while moderates at least somewhat agreed 82.2% of the time, and conservatives did likewise 96.9% of the time. The ideological difference translated to political party as well, with Democrats at least somewhat agreeing 69.1% of the time, and Republicans agreeing 94.9% of the time. Independents, like moderates, fell somewhere in the middle, at 89.3%.

The poll was commissioned by Let Freedom Ring, Inc., a grassroots public policy organization that promotes constitutional government and economic freedom. . . .The Zogby poll was conducted between Dec. 15 and Dec. 18 and surveyed likely voters. The overall result carries a margin of error of +/- 1.7 percentage points, while the demographic data carry a higher margin.


When CNSNews.com asked members of Congress whether they planned to read the full text of the health care legislation, many of them admitted they would not. In October, Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) said he would not read the legislative text before voting it out of the Senate Finance Committee, its first step toward passage, because it was so “confusing.” “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 told CNSNews.com.

In July, CNSNews.com asked House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) whether he supported a pledge Let Freedom Ring . . . which stipulated that the signatories would read the bill before voting on it. Hoyer laughed at the notion and said, “If every member pledged to not vote for it if they hadn’t read it in its entirety, I think we would have very few votes.”

. . . [I]n July, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-Mich.), also said the language in the long health care bill was Byzantine. “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” he asked. . . .

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