From the Region 5 - Online Town Hall Meeting today.

Give Us 72 Hours to Read the Bill

Judi from Castle Rosk asks: How much success are you having/have you had in getting the bill through to give members of congress more time to read/review bills before they are voted on? Would it affect both House and Senate or just the House?

Mr. Baird responds--- Dear Judi, Thanks for writing about this. I think its absolutely crazy that we are required to vote on legislation that no one has had time to read but spends hundreds of billions of dollars of your taxpayer money. As you know, I've led the fight to require that not only we in Congress have at least 72 hourse to read bills before votes, but so do you and the media. This simple, common sense reform would go a long way to improving what happens in Congress and reduce the influence of special interests. So far we have over thirty co sponosors and now have a couple of Republicans on board as well. Unfortunatley, the Republican majority refused to allow us to offer this provision as an amendment to their "lobby reform" bill. That refusal says a lot about how serious they were about reform I think. You and the others on this e town hall can actually help with this by logging onto ReadTheBill.org and telling all you friends across the country to ask their representatives or candidates if they'll support our bill. If they will not, ask them why they don't think they should have to read bills before voting and why they don't think citizens should have that chance also. Thanks again for your interest. We'll keep fighting for this because it's the right thing for our country and our Congress.