Finance Bill’s Final Language: 1,502 Pages

ABC News' Z. Byron Wolf reports: In the weeks that the Senate Finance Committee was marking up Chairman Max Baucus’ health reform plan there was a lot of grumbling from Republicans that the process was not transparent enough because the Senators were considering a 262 page outline written in “conceptual” language, which is lawmaker’s attempt at plain English. Democrats on the Finance Committee, citing a Committee precedent, argued that the Baucus bill was more understandable in conceptual language than in legislative language, and pointed out that the Baucus bill was never more than one of two bills informing the final product in the Senate – that new bill, which merges the Finance bill with the more liberal HELP Committee bill, is being written behind closed doors. Baucus, lead HELP Democrat Chris Dodd and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid are set to meet this evening with representatives from the White House to chart their progress. In other words – the Finance Committee worked for months to create a bill, which was then set aside as Democratic leaders went about writing it all over again. The fact that the Baucus bill has been shelved as Democrats go about the bill merger process did not keep some poor soul at the Committee office from having to take the Baucus bill’s conceptual language and turn it into legislative language. The result, with larger font and margins and double spacing, swells the product from 262 pages to 1,502.
The conceptual version: http://www.finance.senate.gov/sitepages/leg/LEG%202009/100209_Americas_Healthy_Future_Act_AMENDED.pdf
The legislative language version: http://finance.senate.gov/press/Bpress/2009press/prb101909.pdf That’s longer than the HELP Committee’s bill, which rang in at 839 pages and the House Energy and Commerce Committee version – 1017 pages: http://energycommerce.house.gov/Press_111/20090714/aahca.pdf Republican leaders have made an talking point of the length of bills, or as the Senate Minority Leader puts it in floor speeches – “…another thousand-page, trillion-dollar government takeover…”  It has been an effective talking point; moderate Democrats are insisting that whatever bill the Democratic leaders and the White House craft be online in legislative text for 72 hours before a cloture vote, a final vote in the Senate and a final vote from conference to reconcile it with what the House passes. That’s 9 days having a bill online so the public can read it.