Group wants health care bill posted online

The Senate Finance Committee got bogged down for two hours Wednesday on a simple amendment about language. Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., proposed a measure that would require the committee to put the full legislative language of their health care bill online 72 hours before voting.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., called the idea a delay tactic, while Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, criticized Democrats for opposing it. The key difficulty revolved around "legislative language," the complex and wonky legalese that makes up congressional documents.

In the end, the committee went with an amendment from Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., to post the "conceptual language," which is generally easier for laypeople to read. Lawmakers typically work in the conceptual language before rewriting the bill in legislative form. But the dispute recalled the town hall protesters yelling at lawmakers to read the bill, with some even toting stacks of paper to protest the legislation's length.

The campaign to get lawmakers to read their bills has a champion in a group called Read to Vote. Mark DiMassimo, one of the groups co-founders, said that Bunning's amendment would be a good place to start to make sure lawmakers and the public know what exactly is in the laws they pass. "Posting the bill in conceptual language is a step in the right direction, but posting the legislative language is a step even further in the right direction," DiMassimo said. "Ideally, you want to understand what a bill is about and make sure the public has access to it before it becomes law."

DiMassimo said that the debate over conceptual vs. legislative language might make lawmakers rethink how they write bills in the first place. He added that it might be "naive" to think all laws could be written in plain language today, but that doing so would help the public follow along. The groups believes that posting the bill online, regardless of language, us necessary to make sure that the voters are heard.

"Maybe one person can't read the whole thing, but together we can," DiMassimo said. "We can all identify the problematic language and bring it up."