Jackie Danicki

James Wilson emails that the full text of H.R. 3580, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 introduced one week ago - a bill that weighs in at 422 pages long - was released only 20 minutes before floor consideration. It was also voted on without debate, on a “suspend the rules and pass” motion.

It passed with 405 representatives in favor and seven opposed. The Senate passed it unanimously the next day.

Admittedly, the bill wasn’t entirely new. Earlier in the year, the Senate passed an apparently similar bill, the 500-page S. 1082, and the House had passed the similar, 312-page H.R. 2900. The subject, then, wasn’t completely out-of-the-blue. But those two bills were different from each other by 188 pages. H.R. 3580 appears to split the difference, but what has been added from the previous bills? What has been subtracted? Has anything been secretly inserted? Aside from the legislative staffers who put it together, does anyone know? Were they “helped” by Administration bureaucrats? By lobbyists?

Uh, all of the above, maybe? It’s shameless, because they know nothing can be done to stop them. Power corrupts absolutely. Since when is this breaking news?

Wilson is right to quote the Federalist Papers:

It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow.

Filed under: Life