Stephen Breyer Quotes
We know that the Senator does not read every word of legislation. Just as the CEO of General Motors does not attach every nut and bolt to a car.
For complex legislation, there are very few members of Congress who vote on the legislation who could honestly say that they have read the entire bill. Breyer and many others do not see this as a major problem; many others consider it a disgrace that members of Congress will vote for or against a law that they have not even read.
Stephen Breyer, U. S. Supreme Court Justice, Interview with Linda Greenhouse, C-SPAN, January 22, 2011
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
In general, there are so many versions of a bill as it goes through the Congressional process, that the members of Congress do not read each and every draft. Some do not read any of the drafts and leave it to the Committee; others trust their staffs or their party leadership. More often they trust the lobbyists who donate to their campaigns. Sometimes, the bills are so large—many thousands of pages that the members of Congress lose track of all the aspects of the proposed law and only read a few sections in which they may have participated in debate. Often, the only people who read the entire bill are the lobbyists and one or two of committee staff.
See Henry Clay for an earlier expression of this point.
At the time, most members never read the bills they voted on, though some tended to read earlier versions. The bills were very long—sometimes as long as 2000 pages. Usually a few members of Congress worked with Congressional Staffs and lobbyists to finalize bills. It was believed that the lobbyists were the only people who read the entire bills in all their versions.
Note his choice of the word “control”. Some politicians believe that the purpose of most legislation is to enhance the control; that the government maintains over its citizens. However the United States Constitution was written and ratified so that the citizens could control the politicians. Neither group has prevailed totally.
1st Earl of Beaconsfield. The last sentence some scholars think was originated by William Scott, a legal official of the British Navy.
This is especially true in the Senate, where there not only is the filibuster available to the minority but there are “holds” where a single senator can anonymously stop certain processes such as conformations of appointments and a number of other arcane techniques allowed by Senate rules.
Stephen Gerald Breyer is an American lawyer, jurist, and legal scholar who is serving as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Bill Clinton on May 17, 1994, and has served since August 3, 1994.
