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akudha 5 days ago

Not trying to be snarky or sarcastic. Who reads 1116 pages???? How can congress people vote on a bill that is so large, possibly with very dense info to grasp (haven't read it, just guessing, as it is tax/finance related bill)? This would be hard enough for accountants to read and grasp.

Can't this be broken into smaller, manageable bills?

bruce511 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

It could be, but none of them would pass.

All politics is about compromise, and getting enough votes to pass. Since most of congress is against most bills, the only way to get anything passed is to lump it all together, and give everyone enough so they can hold their noses and vote for it.

In the current climate it's pretty certain no democrats are voting for it, and the majorities in both houses are razor thin. So pretty much every republican needs to be accommodated with some or other pet project or whatever.

aaronbaugher 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

And that's not large. Grok says budget bills over the past 25 years have averaged between 1500-2000 pages, and the big omnibus budget bills get closer to 5000 pages.

On top of that, if you actually try to read a bill, you'll see many references to previous legislation, like, "US Code 123.45 section A is hereby amended to read 'blah blah blah....'" So you have to go read a bunch of other legislation to know what each line item is really about.

On top of that, once it passes and is sent out to the various bureaucracies it applies to, they will put their own interpretation on it, sometimes giving it an expansive interpretation and in other cases dragging their feet, so the actual result can be very different from what you took away from poring over thousands of pages.

You could almost come to the conclusion that the whole legislative thing is just for show, and the real power has been diffused elsewhere.