U.S. Rep. Michael Michaud got up to speed last July on a plane trip from Washington, D.C., to Presque Isle. A lengthy layover in Boston ensured that Maine’s 2nd District congressman had time to finish reading all the way through a preliminary draft of HR 3200, the 1,990-page House bill to reform the nation’s health care system.
Later that month, Michaud said Wednesday, he participated in a daylong analysis of the different proposals from the House committees on Energy and Commerce, Ways and Means, and Education and Labor, seeking a deeper understanding of the intertwined measures.
And in November, he sat with his Democratic caucus through a five-hour “briefing” — an oxymoron if ever there was one, Michaud wisecracked — as committee staff reviewed the fine points of every section of the completed legislation.
So when critics accuse him of not having read the full legislation, of not having taken the time to understand its far-reaching implications before voting in favor of its passage, mild-mannered Michaud bristles just a bit.
“I doubt very much that the people who call or write demanding to know if I have read the legislation have read it themselves,” he said by telephone.
U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree also brought the preliminary House bill home to Maine to read last summer after it was first introduced.
“I kept it around for a while after that,” she recalled Thursday.
Pingree said she relied on her staff to work through sections of the emerging legislation and sought their analysis as well as input from constituents and industry experts. But as a member of the House Committee on Rules, Pingree personally reviewed every amendment to the House bill and combed through the final project again before voting for it.
“What most people don’t realize is that bills are double- and triple-spaced; they’re designed for marking up.” The House bill is a daunting read to be sure, she said, “but it’s not as long as a lot of people think.”
Assuming the Senate passes reform legislation of its own, the two bills will be merged through a conference committee. Pingree said she would read through the conference report for major changes before she votes.
“We’ll read everything we can get our hands on, so we can explain it to our constituents and to look for problems we might want to address in the future,” she said.
Health reform legislation in the Senate is still evolving. After weeks of partisan debate and amendment of a preliminary bill passed in the Finance Committee in October, Majority Leader Harry Reid has compiled a “manager’s amendment” that contains important last-minute changes. Reid’s measure is not yet publicly available; its financial impact is under review by the Congressional Budget Office. The amendment must be filed by Saturday to keep the Senate on track for the Christmas Eve deadline set by President Barack Obama for approving the health reform package and sending it to conference.
Maine’s two moderate Republican senators are considered essential to securing passage of the Democratic measure — the only Senate Republicans to show even a glimmer of support.
But for Sen. Susan Collins, the president’s ambitious timeline could be a deal-breaker.
“This is my enormous frustration with the process,” she said in a telephone interview Thursday. “Sen. Reid has chosen to draft this [amendment] behind closed doors. … I will not vote for a bill that has not been available long enough for my staff and me to read and digest it.”
Collins said Reid’s amendment essentially replaces the Finance Committee bill, which she has read completely.
“Which took a long time, I might add” — about two weeks, on and off, she said. “I kept reading away at it,” Collins added.
“Within the next few days, we’re going to be asked to vote on a mammoth bill we will not have had time to review,” she said. “This is not how we should be proceeding on the most important debate of the year. There is no reason for us to try and jam this bill through.”
As a key member of the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Olympia Snowe said Thursday that she personally read through the initial bill and then reviewed every one of hundreds of amendments before voting on its passage in October.
“That one was written in plain English,” she commented. “It was a lot easier than this one.”
Snowe’s current reading project — new proposals written in the demanding prose of the legislative process and cross-referenced to a myriad of other laws and regulations — fills four fat loose-leaf notebooks that her heavy-lifting staff lugs in and out of meetings. In addition, Snowe said, reports and other documents related to health care reform are heaped on most of the flat surfaces of her office in the Russell Senate Office Building.
“I’ve literally been living and breathing this 24-7 for months,” she said. While she’s quick to credit her staff with helping her digest the details of the emerging legislation, Snowe said she makes a point of reading everything that may find its way into the final document.
Snowe, who is deemed more likely than Collins to support the Senate bill, was headed for a meeting with Obama as soon as she got off the phone Thursday. The main point she will make to the president, she said, is that his goal of a full Senate vote before Christmas will make it very difficult for anyone, no matter how dedicated, to fully read, review and understand the final health reform bill.
990-8291
