The Senate began voting on Saturday evening to begin debate on President Donald Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill. As of this writing, the vote is still going on. Three Republicans, Ron Johnson (Wi.), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Thom Tillis (N.C.) have already voted no, Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) voted yes, oddly enough, and Vice President JD Vance is on hand in order to cast a tie-breaking vote in case of a 50-50 tie.
If it comes to that, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-Cheeseburgers) stands ready to throw a big roadblock into the path of the bill’s progress, immediately forcing hapless clerks to read the entire 940-page bill out loud on the Senate floor before debate can begin.
Schumer announced on Saturday afternoon: “BREAKING: I will object to Republicans moving forward on their Big, Ugly Bill without reading it on the Senate floor. Republicans won’t tell America what’s in the bill. So Democrats are forcing it to be read start to finish on the floor. We will be here all night if that’s what it takes to read it.”
Fox News noted: “Indeed, staffers were seen carting the bill onto the Senate floor in preparation for the all-night read-a-thon,” and that “Schumer’s move is expected to take up to 15 hours.”
There is no doubt that senators shouldn’t vote on a bill without knowing what’s in it, and it is salutary for the public as well to know what our lawmakers are getting us into. It is, however, the height of hypocrisy for Schumer, or any Democrat, to be insisting on transparency.
After all, it was then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who launched a thousand memes back in 2010 during the debate on Obamacare. Touting the glories of the leftist health care plan that has contributed so greatly to the decline of health care in America over the last fifteen years, Pelosi said: “You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other. But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket. Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.”
Pelosi declined, however, to explain all the specific wonders of the bill, instead saying: “But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.” Yes, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” were the indelible words of one of the leaders of the same party that is now insisting that the Big, Beautiful Bill has to be read out loud on the Senate floor before debate can begin.
Adding to the hypocrisy is the fact that Schumer was against the reading of a massive bill just four years ago. Fox News reported that “the last time clerks were forced to read the entirety of a bill during the budget reconciliation process was in 2021, when Senate Democrats held the majority in the upper chamber. At the time, Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., demanded that the entire, over-600-page American Rescue Act be read aloud. Schumer, who was the Senate Majority Leader attempting to ram then-President Joe Biden’s agenda through the upper chamber, objected to the reading.”
The reality is that Schumer is not really the fearless advocate for transparency that he is pretending to be at all. His demand that the bill be read aloud is simply a delaying tactic, and as Fox News noted, is “designed to allow Senate Democrats more time to parse through the myriad provisions within the massive legislative text.” That is, they can find more aspects of the bill to decry and whip up hysteria over once they get fifteen hours to pore over the thing, while cutting down on the time that Senators will have actually to debate the bill.
Watch PJ Media for updates as the vote continues.
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