Senate Finance Committee Falsely Claims It Posted "Full Text" of Bill Online

By Nicholas Ballasy, Video Reporter
CNSNews.com
Oct. 15, 2009

The Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), claimed it posted the “full text” of its health care reform bill, “America’s Healthy Future Act,” on its Web site. But when users clicked the link to read the proposed law, they could only access a 259-page document that included summaries of both current law and the proposed legislation--or what some senators called a "plain English" version of the bill.

The actual “legislative language” of the bill--the words that would become the law of the land if the bill were enacted--is not available to the public and apparently has not even been written.

Nonetheless, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scored the plain text summary of the bill on Oct. 7, cautiously estimating its cost at $829 billion. The members of the committee voted the bill out of the committee based on the summary on Tuesday, 14-9, picking up only one Republican vote, Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine.

While the committee released a memorandum to reporters and editors on Oct. 2 claiming had released the "full text of the America’s Healthy Future Act,” the link attached to the online version of the memorandum led to the summary--not an actual legislative text--and the CBO’s Oct. 7 “preliminary analysis” of the bill contradictng the committee's claim that it had released the "full text."

“The Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been converted into legislative language," said the CBO. "The review of such language could lead to significant changes in the estimates of the proposal’s effects on the federal budget and insurance coverage.”

On Sept. 22, CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf told the Senate Finance Committee, “We’ve told all the people who’ve asked that it will take us about two weeks to do a formal cost estimate after we have a full bill, but we can do an updated preliminary analysis quicker than that.”

At that same hearing, Sen. Baucus said: “I just have to tell you, Mr. Elmendorf, this is a very serious concern of this committee, to urge you to with all deliberate speed make sure that you address the scoring of this bill and the modifications and give us a preliminary as soon as you can. … I can't overemphasize how important this point is."

In February, Congress posted the complete legislative text of the economic stimulus bill less than 24 hours before it voted on the legislation. This was the actual legislative text of the bill--the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009--that would become law, unlike the health care summary posted by the Senate Finance Committee.

The summary that the committee posted provides descriptions of current law and the proposed law, and includes several edits that senators made during committee debate.

By comparison, the version of the health care bill produced by three committees is in the form of legislative language and is more than 1,000 pages long.

Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com that the committee has always worked with a plain-language version of the bill rather than with the actual legislative language of the proposed law.

CNSNews.com asked Bingaman, “Will you read the entire text of the health care bill before the Finance Committee votes on it?”

Bingaman said: “I expect to. I’ve been reading it as we went along. I think--well, the truth is the Finance Committee is going to try to report a version that is based on the plain language of the bill. And then, as I understand it, that will be turned into legislative language, which then will be combined with the legislative language that’s come out of the HELP Committee and presented to the full Senate as a complete text.”

CNSNews.com also asked Bingaman: “So, the entire text of the bill is what you will have access to and you will read before you vote on it, or just the conceptual language?”

He answered: “I think the plain language version, it’s not just conceptual. It’s a plain language description of the various provisions of the bill is what the Senate Finance Committee has always done when it passes legislation, and then that is turned into legislative language which is what is presented to the full Senate for consideration.”

Senator Thomas Carper (D-Del.), who also serves on the Finance Committee, told CNSNews.com that legislative language is “incomprehensible.”

“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,” he said. “We, we write in this committee and legislate with plain English and I think most of us can understand most of that.”

“When you get into the legislative language, Senator Conrad actually read some of it, several pages of it, the other day and I don’t think anybody had a clue--including people who have served on this committee for decades--what he was talking about,” said Carper.

When Republicans tried on Sept. 23 to amend the proposed bill to allow its complete legislative language to be posted online for the American people to read for at least 72 hours before the committee voted on it, the Democrats defeated the amendment.

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said at the time, “Let’s be honest about it, most people don’t read the legislative language.”

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said: “I remember sitting on the dais when President Obama was inaugurated and gave his inaugural speech where he talked about the importance of transparency in government. He said ‘transparency breeds accountability and builds public confidence.'

“ … For a bill - most of which will not be implemented until 2013 - it is not an inconvenience, it is not something we ought to overlook, the opportunity to get the American people to be able to read it and get a full score. I've heard a lot of discussion at town hall meetings and elsewhere. People are mad about Congress voting on things we haven't even read.

“I don't know how anybody can be held accountable or build public confidence if we don't have the information, and the American people don't have the information, to make their own evaluation, to ask questions and hold us accountable."