Health Care Debate Snarled Over Language
Republicans fail to force rewrite of health bill into legalese.
Sept. 23, 2009 -- Day two of the health care reform markup in the Senate Finance Committee began with a spirited two-and-a-half hour debate on a central question of the American system of government -- should lawmakers understand the letter of the law they're voting on?
It was a doozy of an amendment; spirited debate had gone all morning but it was defeated on a party line vote.
The amendment, offered by Kentucky Republican Sen. Jim Bunning, would have required that the bill they are considering be posted on line in it's full legislative language -- not the more traditional summary format -- at least 72 hours before a final committee vote.
In addition Bunning wanted the Congressional Budget Office to prepare a final cost analysis of the bill also within 72 hours of the final committee vote.
The 223-page bill that Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., has offered is currently written in what is called conceptual language, a common practice at the finance committee to help lawmakers more easliy grasp the overly complicated nature of fiscal legislation.
Problem is, said the Democrats today, if the committee deliberated the bill in the long winded final form, nobody would understand it.
See the health care reform bill and its modifications and proposed amendments here.
As an example, instead of the arcane and confusing legalese that will call for the creation of high risk pools for people with pre-existing conditions, Baucus' bill simply says, "Within a year of enactment, any uninsured individual who has been denied health care coverage due to a pre-existing condition can enroll in a high-risk pool."
"What is conceptual language? It's plain English. I'm not a lawyer," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., in defense of Baucus' bill.
But Republicans on the committee say conceptual language isn't good enough. They want the bill in the formal legislative language, which would swell Baucus' bill to "4 times, maybe 5 times the length," Sen Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said, arguing that the full language should be written before a vote.
"The devil is in the details when you write the language," declared Bunning. "This bill is too big and too important for us to rely on conceptual language."
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