Literacy Check

time spent: 20 minutes

Tonight I revisited the congressman's legislative records and opened the full text of one bill to see whether I could understand it what was written, without the benefit of having an attorney's background. The first bill was selected at random, H.R. 3039 regarding the preferential duty treatment of certain apparel articles from the Philippines. To my surprise and relief, I was able to read through the bill with relative ease.

Encouraged by this discovery, I launched my search for the bills that I felt were of particular interest to me. There were several candidates: HR 4183 addressing assistance for unemployed workers, HR 3548 addressing emergency unemployment compensation, HR 3038 addressing the civil rights act and others. Unfortunately a number of these were amendments, so the format was more cryptic and less comprehensive than that of a new bill, which meant that in order for me to fully appreciate the context of the amendment I would have to refer to the original language of the bill. Not enough of a deterrent, but definitely more work. Perhaps there is another way....