Members of Congress caught a lot of flak a year ago when most of them (Democrats, mainly) actually bragged about not having read the Obamacare bill that would change America irrevocably. The Speaker of the House made this irresponsibility a selling point when she said they had to pass it to see what was in it.
Well, now it seems that member of Congress can’t even be bothered to name bills before passing them:
So desperate is the United States Congress to spend $26 billion to bail out state governments—ensuring state governments have no incentive to stay within budgets, so that we can bail them out repeatedly until the end of time— that they didn’t even name the bill.
Here’s how North Carolina’s House members voted on the Charlie Rangel-proposed bill, which is actually (not kidding) named “The XXXXXX Act of XXXX“:
Yea NC-1 Butterfield, George [D]
Yea NC-2 Etheridge, Bob [D]
Yea NC-3 Jones, Walter [R]
Yea NC-4 Price, David [D]
Nay NC-5 Foxx, Virginia [R]
Nay NC-6 Coble, Howard [R]
Yea NC-7 McIntyre, Mike [D]
Nay NC-8 Kissell, Larry [D]
Nay NC-9 Myrick, Sue [R]
Nay NC-10 McHenry, Patrick [R]
Yea NC-11 Shuler, Heath [D]
Yea NC-12 Watt, Melvin [D]
Yea NC-13 Miller, R. [D]
Don’t be fooled by the description of this bill as:
An act to modernize the air traffic control system, improve the safety, reliability, and availability of transportation by air in the United States, provide for modernization of the air traffic control system, reauthorize the Federal Aviation Administration, and for other purposes.
Those “other purposes” are to impose a 90 percent tax on the bonuses of employees of corporations that received TARP funds. It applies only to those employees making less than $250,000, at least for now. The Senate still has to act on it.
