Quote:
Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
I had the same reaction you did, Steve. While not a lawyer, I read many, many loan and legal documents as a banker. In a whole lot of cases, I needed the assistance of our lawyers to explain the meaning of terms, the inter-relationship between sections or how existing law impacts on the content of the document I was reviewing. In many instances, about the best I could do alone is prepare a list of questions that I needed help with.
In reading thru HR 3200, in a cursory manner as you did, I find this bill in the same category, except that I don't have a lawyer to lean on. That being the case, I found it interesting that some posters here in the Political Forum listed the meaning of various sections and various pages with such absolute certainty. I went back and read several of the pages they cited and came away with either a question or with an altogether different interpretation.
A whole bunch of people were also aghast that Representative John Dingell said that he saw little benefit for him to read the entire bill. I know that his role was just to introduce the bill that someone else actually wrote and that he was probably being honest. But I found his statement ill-timed and unwise in that he still was listed as the principal sponsor of the bill. One really needs a lawyer to spend the time explaining the bill, it's terms, definitions and interrelationships. Is Dingell a lawyer? Even if he isn't, he's been making laws for a long, long time.
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A little over a third of the congressfolk have law degrees. Most who have passed the bar are on "inactive" status at their bars.
If there's that much confusion in understanding the statute, writing the supporting (interpretive) regulations afterwards will be abominable. Once regulations have been put in place, the courts tend to leave them be as agency-expertise documents and give them a lot of deference if challenged. Another good reason to make sure everyone agrees with what the statute's language really means.