- Danny Schwartz
If Herman Cain keeps talking, he’ll talk himself right out of the vice presidential slot:
Cain wants to stop lawmakers from passing bills that are over three pages long. Talk about small government.
“Don’t try to pass a 2,700-page bill,” Cain said to a responsive audience in Pella, Iowa, on Monday.
“You and I didn’t have time to read it. We’re too busy trying to live — send our kids to school. That’s why I am only going to allow small bills — three pages. You’ll have time to read that one over the dinner table,” Cain said.
I guess that makes sense. I’ve never seen a pizza restaurant menu that was longer than three pages.
He really is clueless. Wow. Maybe somebody should send him the tax code. Or ERISA.
Someone should have him personally carry the Chinese deficit payments in small bills to pay for his Republican Foreign Wars of Adventure.
By hand.
I do think expecting people to read and absorb dense, 2700-page bills is a little much. But why not limit to, say, 1,000? We have to go all the way down to 3?
And the dinner table thing makes it sound like he wants to skim over them while he munches on pork rinds. But then, he’s the people’s candidate, and skimming some short celebrity gossip piece over a bowl of Fritos is about all the reading most people can handle.
I predict the use of very small fonts and a great many more abbreviations in legislation.
why is limiting the length of federal legislation even an issue being discussed? this is fucking absurd. america is stupid.
Passing thousand page bills primarily written by lobbyists that our congressmen never actually read is a definite problem, though. Glad to see someone moving the conversation in the right direction, even if it’s ludicrously far in the right direction.
One of the pleasures of watching business people run for executive office is that they all act like they’ll have as much power running a democratic government as they do running their monolithic businesses. So they make insane promises like this, as if the President gets to determine Congressional page count.
Event the Emancipation Proclamation was longer than 3 pages.
Is sending your kids to school really that time-consuming?
Not my best use of the world “monolithic.” I meant “top-downy.” Blush!
Maybe he’d like Congress to twitter all their proposed legislation instead?
Also, the Constitution is 4 pages long.
If they don’t deliver the law in 30 minutes or less, is it free?
Just like the Godfathers menu: one page for pizza, one page for sides, and one page for dessert. Why not just model everything in the federal government after a pizza restaurant? Free bread sticks with every piece of passed legislation!
Perhaps he should make an exception to read the constitution. The executive branch doesn’t get to order the legislative branch to limit it’s bills to three pages.
“I’m only going to allow” — uh-huh.
I’m sure revamping trillion dollar industries can fit in the space of the Stranger’s escort section.
I like it. After all, the less you put in the legislation, the more you can write into the regulations.For instance, a three page farm bill could totally be codified to outlaw crappy pizza chains.
@14,
It’ll be the American version of bread and circuses, but you better make those bread sticks cheese-filled.
@15 Well he could veto everything over 3 pages. I can just hear him say “I’d love to sign these tax cuts into law, but no dice, ya’ll double spaced.”
Yeah, because private companies aren’t rife with excessive documentation.
Man, there’s steep competition for the illiterate vote in this primary. I’m on the edge of my seat!
I like it! In fact, it can be improved upon, by using the five-word idea from the Webby awards. If it can’t be expressed in five words – Monopolies Suck, So No Megacorporations – then it probably isn’t worth expressing, amirite?
Or, for more complex legislation, we could write haiku.
@21 – No kidding. As CEO I bet he never saw a slide deck with fewer than 20 pages. Or maybe he had the same rule there.
No wonder his pizza sucks.
Herman Cain is the man, http://www.hermancainforums.com
Superfrankenstein
One of the pleasures of watching business people run for executive office is that they all act like they’ll have as much power running a democratic government as they do running their monolithic businesses. So they make insane promises like this, as if the President gets to determine Congressional page count.
Yeah the president does have a lot of say–its called a veto! Second, it reminds me when Pres. Obama promised withdrawal from Iraq, Afghanistan. Instead we got a new war Libya. The promise to close Guantanamo–still open. The promise of unemployment to not reach above 8.5%; unemployment hit 10%. The promise of a better world image-our allies are unsure about us. Sounds like the politicians have the problem with making promises they can’t keep.
You all must be a bunch of left-wing racist. Oh wait…that only works against the right wing when disagreeing with Pres. Obama’s policies. Heehee.