Conyers: 'What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages'

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich) suggests that reading a 1,000 page bill that will impact huge swaths of the U.S. economy does not make sense, given the short period of time to vote on it.

At a National Press Club luncheon on Monday, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers spoke and asked his audience a question. “What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill,” Conyers asked, underscoring the concerns and the pressures that have been mounting in the House. While it appears that a House vote on the health care bill will not happen prior to the August recess - and that Speaker Nancy Pelosi does not have the consensus or the votes that she promised last week - the American public has been asking legislators to read the bill fully before casting their votes. “I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers, as reported by CBS News. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been pressuring House Democrats to pass the health care bill before the August recess, but the short time table has drawn criticism from Democrats and Republicans alike. Now some Democrats are blaming Emanuel for the presence of the more moderate House Democrats in the first place. “That’s going to be difficult for Rahm Emanuel because, don’t forget, he recruited them,” Rep. Maxine Walters told Politico. “When he was in Congress, in the leadership, Rahm Emanuel recruited more conservative members, and, based on some of the information, ... they told him they could vote the way they wanted to — the chickens are coming home to roost.”