Conyers says he doesn't read the bills AGAIN

**EWFisher14** · February-18-12, 08:04 PM

Rep. Conyers was interviewed today by the Daily Caller about the payroll tax cuts and his yes vote on the bill. He said he didn't read the bill even though he had it in advance. What did we send him to DC for if he's not going to even read what he's voting on? This is why so many are frustrated with DC and Congress.

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/17/co...oted-on-video/

What do you think?

**firstandten** · February-18-12, 08:32 PM

Non of those guys read the bills. They have been told what's on the bill by there caucus and get a cliff notes version by their staffers. Many of those bills are the size of War and Peace and are better than a sleeping pill.

Conyers said that because he knows few if any congresspeople actually read those bills past the executive summary

**313WX** · February-18-12, 08:34 PM

It's not just Conyers, NONE of the Congress people read the bills.

What they likely do is split parts of the bills amongst their assistants to read, have their assistants pick out the main points in it [[I.E., the points that will cause hoopla amongst the general public), and then the Congress person runs with them when voting for or against the bills.

**MikeyinBrooklyn** · February-18-12, 08:59 PM

Having worked 2 years as a low-rung staffer in a Senator's office in my youth, I can verify that no member reads every bill, but a good chunk DO read the bills marked up by committees they serve on, or that the cosign. While major legislation, including budget bills, literally run into the thousands of pages, a lot of legislation is under 100 pages.

While acknowledging upfront that Mr. Conyers is very liberal and I am very conservative, I must say he is not known as being either a particularly hardworking or well informed member. Detroit is not well served by that man. Since we'r going to have a liberal Democrat repping Detroit in the House, let's at least have a smart and prodiuctive one, shall we?

**firstandten** · February-18-12, 09:32 PM

Originally Posted by MikeyinBrooklyn

Having worked 2 years as a low-rung staffer in a Senator's office in my youth, I can verify that no member reads every bill, but a good chunk DO read the bills marked up by committees they serve on, or that the cosign. While major legislation, including budget bills, literally run into the thousands of pages, a lot of legislation is under 100 pages.

While acknowledging upfront that Mr. Conyers is very liberal and I am very conservative, I must say he is not known as being either a particularly hardworking or well informed member. Detroit is not well served by that man. Since we'r going to have a liberal Democrat repping Detroit in the House, let's at least have a smart and prodiuctive one, shall we?

Problem is that person is not going to have the money or organization to beat Conyers. In the past there have been many Detroiters who may have been good but running against Conyers they weren't going to get the endorsements that would give them a fighting chance. Once a congressperson gets so much seniority its hard to get them out no matter what the party. CCK was an exception and it was more about her son than it was her.

The only way Conyers will get beat is if he gets caught up in some kind of scandal and there's a smoking gun.

Don't like it, but thats the way the system has worked for members of both parties for years.

**MikeyinBrooklyn** · February-19-12, 12:26 AM

Originally Posted by firstandten

Problem is that person is not going to have the money or organization to beat Conyers. In the past there have been many Detroiters who may have been good but running against Conyers they weren't going to get the endorsements that would give them a fighting chance. Once a congressperson gets so much seniority its hard to get them out no matter what the party. CCK was an exception and it was more about her son than it was her.

The only way Conyers will get beat is if he gets caught up in some kind of scandal and there's a smoking gun.

Don't like it, but thats the way the system has worked for members of both parties for years.

Agreed with all your points, but with the change in districts, his no longer being in the majority [[and thus wielding far less power), and his highly advanced age, he will either lose this year, or he will be in office until he dies. I don't wish ill on the man, I just wish he'd retire and let someone else have a job he wasn't regarded by his colleagues as up to twenty years ago.

Note: while I was even back in the early 90s a conservative, I worked for a prominent northeastern liberal senator. This senator was not a fan of Mr. Conyers.

Occurrence · February-19-12, 01:36 AM

Didn't Conyers support and/or sponsor the SOPA act? That alone should be enough for anyone to vote him out. He's incompetent and his wife is a piece of garbage. Who keeps voting this clown back into office?

**Det_ard** · February-19-12, 04:38 PM

Originally Posted by Occurrence

Didn't Conyers support and/or sponsor the SOPA act? That alone should be enough for anyone to vote him out. He's incompetent and his wife is a piece of garbage. Who keeps voting this clown back into office?

Everybody in his district. Well, except for the 20% who vote for his Republican opponent. Conyer's lowest vote percentage ever was 77%. He's totally on auto-pilot and it shows. 24 terms is enough for him, but he'll leave on a gurney.

**Detroitnerd** · February-20-12, 12:19 PM

There it is again. Conyers does something wrong. Or doesn't do something right. Something that, essentially, every other congressperson does. And then there's an OP with zero posts on here screaming about it. Notice something odd about that?

I'm not the hugest fan of Conyers. But I know when somebody's warming up the tar and feathers on a guy.

**bopcity** · February-20-12, 12:53 PM

Originally Posted by 313WX

It's not just Conyers, NONE of the Congress people read the bills.

What they likely do is split parts of the bills amongst their assistants to read, have their assistants pick out the main points in it [[I.E., the points that will cause hoopla amongst the general public), and then the Congress person runs with them when voting for or against the bills.

That's what's supposed to happen, at least in Pollyanna's world. The reality is that a lot of them, particularly on the corporatist right, don't even write bills either, quite a few are authored by the corporate-funded American Legislative Exchange Council [[ALEC) or some lobbyist and then handed off to whatever politician they've bought. There's a list of culprits here:

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=ALEC_Politicians

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year...

For anyone who wants to learn what a pitiful cesspool our bought and paid for [[ahem) "democracy" has become, there's even more sordid details within the links below. But you might want to have a barf bag ready.

http://www.thenation.com/article/161978/alec-exposed

http://www.alecexposed.org/