World’s greatest deliberative body only got three minutes to read fiscal cliff bill

**Posted by Phineas

The 154-page fiscal cliff bill, that is:

The U.S. Senate voted 89-8 to approve legislation to avoid the fiscal cliff despite having only 3 minutes to read the 154-page bill and budget score.

Multiple Senate sources have confirmed to CNSNews.com that senators received the bill at approximately 1:36 AM on Jan. 1, 2013 – a mere three minutes before they voted to approve it at 1:39 AM.

The bill is 154-pages and includes several provisions that are unrelated to the fiscal cliff, including repealing a section of ObamaCare, extending the wind-energy tax credit, and a rum tax subsidy deal for Puerto Rican rum makers.

I ask you, is this any way to run a republic?

Oh well, if they could pull this crap for the thousand-or-so pages ofΒ  Obamacare, why the heck not for a mere 154 pages? Heck, I’m surprised they even bothered delivering it to the chamber before passing judgment on it.

So much for the pledge to post bills online for 72 hours before voting.

While the failings of Congress are bipartisan, I lay most of the blame for this particular national embarrassment at the feet of Harry Reid and the Democrats. It’s been known for, what, two years that taxes would go up on January 1st? And we all saw the sequester deadline coming up a year ago. The House sent a bill to the Senate last August to at least buy another year to reach a settlement, but Reid, as per usual, refused to allow a vote and forced matters to wait until the last minute when he knew Republicans would be under heavy pressure to accept a bad deal to avert a catastrophe.

In short, and as the Democrats have done for at least the last ten years, Harry Reid deliberately put his party’s fortune ahead of the nation’s well-being.

“Contemptible” doesn’t begin to describe Harry Reid.

via Doug Powers

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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