Come on, Congresswoman, read the bill!

Oh, for Pete’s sake! It’s bad enough when “representatives” and senators can’t be bothered to read proposed laws because they’re too long and complicated (cue sounds of a toddler whining), but “Representative” Jan Schakowski (D-IL) couldn’t even be bothered to read a bill on an important matter that was one page long. In fact, she hadn’t even heard of it:

There’s really no excuse!

H.R. 3808 would make states recognize documents notarized in other states. It has drawn wide criticism, since many banks have recently admitted that they have been using people called “robo-signers” to sign hundreds of documents without reading them. That is partly why Bank of America and other banks have halted foreclosures in the past few days.

H.R. 3808 could theoretically allow abuses of the foreclosure process to happen more easily. Yet it passed unanimously and without debate in both the House and the Senate, because nobody bothered to read it or object to it.

Unlike the ObamaCare legislation, H.R. 3808 is not thousands of pages long. In fact, it is less than one page long.

Yet almost nobody, Republican or Democrat, bothered to examine it or to think about its possible effects.

Okay, I’m picking on “Red” Jan here, and she definitely deserves it, but all these schmucks who casually voted “aye” need a good whack on the head with a rubber chicken. The banking system has been in a mess for around two years now, largely due to toxic mortgages issued to people who weren’t creditworthy. The restoration of health to the system requires a properly functioning foreclosure process, so the lenders have a chance to recover some of their money. So you would think that a short bill dealing with foreclosures would maybe, perhaps –if you don’t mind, sir or ma’am– garner a bit of attention from the people we hired to pay attention to these things.

Good grief.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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