Is Congressman Mark Kirk A Liar Or A Speed Reader?

Last Friday, the US House of Representatives voted and approved the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (H.R. 2454), also known as “Cap & Trade”. The bill is widely regarded as the largest tax increase in American history.

The bill itself acknowledges that every American will experience a drop in purchasing power as a result of the adoption of the new law.

From page #963 of the bill (h/t Rush Limbaugh):

(ii) The maximum energy tax credit for a filing unit of a particular size shall be equal to the average annual reduction in purchasing power for low-income households of that household size, as calculated by the Environmental Protection Agency, that results from the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions under title VII of the Clean Air Act.

To knowingly reduce people’s purchasing power in the middle of a devastating recession should be considered predatory legislating, but that’s a subject for another post.

The topic of this post is whether or not Congressman Mark Kirk of Illinois (Republican) is a liar.

Rep. Kirk is one of 8 Republicans who voted for this bill, and before he did, he recorded the following YouTube message (h/t Founding Bloggers reader Lauren). In the video Mark Kirk claims to be in the process of reading the entirety of the bill prior to voting yes.

The bill is over 1000 pages in length. If Rep. Kirk was on page 580 several hours before the vote, and he read the rest of the bill before voting as he implies, he would have probably needed to read at a blistering Evelyn Wood rate of nearly 2.5 pages per minute, assuming he also read the 300+ page amendment dropped on the legislators at the last minute.

This is not like reading a book. It’s a complicated legal document. But lets suppose for a moment that he has trained himself to read complicated legal documents at this tremendous pace. How could he have even had time to take a single note? Even if he spoke his notes out loud for a staffer to write down as he went along, how considered could those thoughts possibly have been? he wouldn’t have even had time to re-read or reflect on his notes, let alone the text of the bill.

Even if he could read and take notes that fast, what the hell would be the point? There would be no time left for anything to do about any notes or questions he might have, unless he didn’t have any questions or concerns about language like the passage quoted from the bill (above).

If you take Mark Kirk at face value, you have to assume he read the above passage, and voted ‘yes’ anyway.

So which is it for Congressman Kirk? Did he read the excerpt above and vote yes anyway? Or is he lying when he implied he would read the whole bill before voting?

Predatory legislating.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin says follow the money.

Tags: Cap And Trade, Democrat Corruption, Mark Kirk, U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk

This entry was posted on June 29, 2009 at 2:27 am and is filed under Categorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.