Congress...

Republicans have had much to laugh at recently, when it was revealed that a lot of Democrats do not
actually read the bills they vote on to pass or not to pass in the senate committees.

The following is a true story.

Congress works in strange and complicated ways. (I know, that was not a news flash). Before a bill can come through the House or Senate to even be argued about on the floor, debated about, and eventually voted on, it has to go to a smaller committee, where almost everything dies. Even Barak Obama quipped last year that he proposed a toast at a party with congressmen, and it died in committee.

But this is the story of one brave little  68 page bill, which began as an idea in someone’s mind, and finally got turned into a bill, and submitted to congress, where it got sent to that torture room of the inquisition for bills, the committee. The bill was something very easy to get behind- a bill to help end human trafficking in America, something everybody from any party should support.

And, shock of all shocks, it made it  through. If that one did not give you a heart attack, here is something that might. It passed through committee with unanimous support from BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS. (I know, I know.)

With such support, it seemed as if the tale was destined to end. The bill was going to pass. The credits were going to roll and the music was going to play, we had reached the last page and saw the words “THE END.” Oh but wait, like in a Captain America movie, with the extra scene,  or just as we are about to get up from our theatre seat before Ferris Bueller yells at us, another scene comes on-and Harry Reid, head of Senate Democrats, with a message-in what he called the most unusual circumstance he can possibly recall, somehow the Republicans had managed to put in the bill that the money that was going to be collected in fines from the traffickers could not be used to fund abortions unless in case of rape, incest, or if the birth of the child endangered the life of the mother.

And so, in an unbelievable turn of events, because a bunch of Democrats were too busy doing other things rather than govern, so they didn’t have time to read the bill-the trafficking bill will probably be scuttled.

And the Democrats are going to blame the Republicans for not telling them what was in a bill that part of their job description is that they would read. The case is unbelievable, and leaves us remembering this simple fact-if the Democrats wanted to be consistent in their protection of minors from trafficking, endangerment and death, they should pass this bill and others like, to outlaw one of the worst crimes our modern society allows-killing a child because it is inconvenient for it to live.

This turn of events is, as even the Huffington Post said, laughable. Unbelievable, in fact. These senators were elected to do a job, and if they want to do it right they should do what any fifth grader is taught to do...your homework. Read the bill. Maybe the Democrats should go on air and say what you have to say after you inevitably lose the hit TV Show, “I am not smarter than a fifth grader.” And then they need to go to the blackboard, and write it out a thousand times.

Andrew C. Abbott