Report: House GOP's Constitution Reading Could Cost Over $1 Million

Report: House GOP's Constitution Reading Could Cost Over $1 Million
Source: TalkingPointsMemo.com Now this is a laugh. As Vanity Fair reports, the House GOP leadership's symbolic gesture of reading the Constitution on the House floor today -- in an effort to please their Tea Party base who decry virtually all of the Obama Administration's policies as both a monumental waste of money and, more importantly, an affront to our founding document -- could also itself cost a lot of money. The magazine asked an expert on government waste, and he said in part: The amount...

Lamest pushback ever? Reading Constitution in Congress will cost us $1.1 million!
Brian Faughnan at Liberty Central found this objection to one of the House Republican’s plans to read the US Constitution aloud at Vanity Fair, which Brian called “the stupidest column” ever to run at the magazine.  While that may be a high bar — or low one, depending on your point of view — to clear, the report from Juli Weiner certainly qualifies to be in the running.  In an attempt to shed scorn over GOP efforts at Fiscal Responsibility, she and author Peter ...

What If They Started A Constitution Reading And Nobody Came?
If there was any doubt that the reading of the Constitution on the House floor was a stunt, that doubt can now be dispelled. It wasn’t exactly a full house as you can see here. Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor held an news conference in the middle of the reading, so they were obviously not paying attention to it. But then neither were the people in this photo, who seem either engaged in conversation or otherwise distracted. You must be logged in to post a comment. Oh no...

Estimate: GOPs symbolic reading of Constitution to cost taxpayers $1.1 million
Stumble This! It will cost Taxpayers over $1 million dollars for Republicans to recite the entire United States Constitution on the House floor Thursday. In a year when Republicans have promised to reduce wasteful spending, it is estimated that reciting the Constitution will cost $1,071,872.87 if it takes three hours to read the document. "When one chamber of Congress is in session but not working, we the people still have to pay for members' salaries and expenses, and for their police protecti...

Efficiency Of The DMV: Jon Stewart Mocks Congressional Reading Of The Constitution
Jon Stewart introduced the 112th Congress last night with his signature rapier wit and keen satirical observations. The Daily Show host offered a panoply of funny gags: Speaker John Boehner ’s tears and over-sized gavel; the Birther interruption; the GOP’s attempt to curb spending with a new “Cut-Go” policy. He also ridiculed the reading of the U.S. Constitution on the House floor, saying “you managed to make the reading of one of our nation’s most treasure an...

Birther interrupts the reading of the Constitution in the House (Video)
The Republican effort to improve their image by reading the Constitution aloud in the House has created Controversy on a number of fronts.  Earlier today Vanity Fair revealed the recital likely cost Taxpayers around $1.1 million due to staff salaries which had to be paid to hold the event.  Later critics noted the absence of certain provisions of the Constitution, which were conveniently edited out by Republicans.  When the House finally got around to actually reading the Constitu...

Liberals Reacting To Reading The Constitution In House Pretty Much Exactly As You Expected They Would
DATUM: Washington Post headlines article, Notable passages of Constitution left out of reading in the House What the article actually describes: The "notable passages" left out of the reading are the parts of the Constitution which are no longer part of the Constitution -- that is, the parts which have been replaced/written out by subsequent amendments, and are therefore not in fact "part of the Constitution," except in a purely historical way. In the same way that two legs may be said to be pa...

Members of the House try to sit still for a reading of the Constitution.
Inslee was drowned out by laughter and hoots from the teeming GOP benches, full of freshmen who had queued up for the right to read from the Constitution. Some of them rubbed their eyes as the pre-drama drama went on; more of them looked into the pocket Constitutions they'd brought with them. Inslee wrapped up, saying he also wanted a "Bipartisan success," and sat down, but Rep. Jesse Jackson, D-Ill., was next at bat to explain just how important it was for the House to read the outdated, rotte...

House Republicans Stage a Mighty Expensive Opening Scene
We can get used to a daily dose of hypocrisy from newly minted Speaker of the House John Boehner. Already, House Republicans have spent most of the new year hammering the two themes we can expect to hear constantly over the next two years—Fiscal Responsibility and reverence for the Constitution—while vowing laws that flout both principles. They’ve passed rules saying any spending bill must identify a matching Budget Cut, but have exempted their massively expensive (and purely t...

Those Were some Wretched G-Optics on Day 2
It was only the first full day of legislating, but the new Republican Congress sure looked like they lacked the constitution they neededyesterday -- almost literally. The new GOP majority set off ambitiously enough with a reading of the U.S. Constitution, and things quickly went wrong. First, they had to fight back a Democratic complaint they were leaving out the more shameful parts that counted slaves as only partial people. Then they got embarrassingly interrupted by a birther in the House gal...

Historic reading of Constitution sees House tussle
WASHINGTON -- Republicans made history Thursday by staging the first-ever reading of the entire Constitution on the House floor. But that record may come with an asterisk: Democrats asked why original sections that later were amended, including references to slaves, were left out of the recital, and lawmakers initially did not catch that a couple of key paragraphs were omitted when two pages got stuck together. Disputes and glitches aside, Republican and Democratic lawmakers silenced their diff...

Nevadans sit out reading of Constitution on House floor
Washington — They promised they’d do it, and on the second day of their tenure in the House, the GOP staged a not-so-dramatic reading of the U.S. Constitution. Despite it being the government’s founding document, it’s the first time it’s been read — every article, signature, and amendment — on the floor of the House of Representatives. The event wasn’t just in homage to the Founding Fathers; it was also a sign of the new influence of the Tea Party, for whom adh

Constitution read aloud in House despite birther and Democrats objections
As promised, the Constitution of the United States - that really old document some find confusing or Racist - was read aloud on the floor of the House of Representatives, despite interruptions by a Heckler and Democrats trying to score cheap political points. Fox News reports that Washington Congressman Jay Inslee (D), asked if the original Constitution would be read, or the document as it current stands as amended. Showing the rust of Republicans not having presided over the House Chamber for t...

GOP turns Constitution-reading into most boring circus ever
At first, I thought there was something cool, if a bit hokey, about the GOP's plan to read the Constitution aloud on the floor of the House. But then I decided to watch them actually do it. The first thing I learned was that they weren't actually reading the full text of the Constitution and the amendments. Even though no amendment has ever actually removed language from the Constitution, the GOP decided to skip over parts of the Constitution that in their judgment had been superseded by amendm...

Republicans edit out parts of Constitution before having it read to the House
Today the Republicans are having the United States Constitution read before conducting any other business in the House of Representatives.  The Republicans have presented to move as an attempt to return to the founding principles of the American government.  However, some have criticized the move as a costly Public Relations stunt by Republicans.  Vanity Fair estimated the cost of reading the Constitution to be $1.1 million for Taxpayers.  While the Constitution is read House...

Thoughts on the Debt Limit Debate
The origins of the Federal Government’s statutory Debt Limit can be traced back to 1917, when the country was borrowing money to finance the Great War. Congress has voted to increase the limit numerous times over the decades, including 10 times since 2001. The present Debt Limit is $14.3 Trillion, and total outstanding Debt subject to the limit currently stands at just under $14 trillion. Given that policymakers don’t have the will to cut spending immediately in order to keep the deb...

Ocean County Citizens for Freedom: Part Two
A previous article introduced a Q & A of Ocean County Citizens for Freedom spokesperson Connie Sherwood. This is a continuation of it. Her responses to my questions are in bold type. Q2: What specific goals do you think the Ocean County Citizens for FREEDOM group should pursue in the coming year and how should members go about furthering them? 1. Screen the State Senators & Assembly in our Districts.  Because we have become a group that is centered in Toms River and have members in ...

House Reads the Constitution
Public officials who are sworn into office swear to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. It seems only fitting that they realize just exactly what they’ve sworn to. It became painfully obvious in the 111th Congress that US Representatives had no clue, nor any concern, with the content or meaning of the US Constitution. New leadership in the House of Representatives set the tone today. From Motor City Times: The Constitution has never been read aloud, on the floor of t...

The US House GOP and the Constitution
The big news from Washington, DC this week is the GOP officially taking control of the US House of Representatives.  The new party is trying to set a different tone.  The era of the "jet setting" Speaker Pelosi is being replaced by a GOP leader who actually took a bus to his swearing in from his home in Ohio.  Going forward, Speaker Boehner intends to fly commercial, rather than use a Private Jet as was the practice of Pelosi. There is also a different emphasis.  One we have ...

Constitution read for first time on House floor, with some glitches
WASHINGTON — Republicans made history Thursday by staging the first-ever reading of the entire Constitution on the House floor. But that record might come with an asterisk: Democrats asked why original sections that later were amended, including references to slaves, were left out of the recital, and lawmakers initially did not catch that a couple of key paragraphs were omitted when two pages got stuck together. Disputes and glitches aside, Republican and Democratic lawmakers silenced thei...

White House spits on GOP's health care reform scorched-Earth policy, vows to veto any repeal
Anyone who can count beyond their fingers and toes knows the Tea Party-led GOP effort to Repeal the still freshly-minted Health Care law won't make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate, but the Obama Administration isn't taking any chances: Should the Republican bill repealing Health Care reform make it to President Obama's desk,  "He would Veto it," the White House said this evening.   "The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 2 (the Repeal bill ) because it would expl...

White House Spits on GOP's HCR Scorched-Earth Policy
Anyone who can count beyond their fingers and toes knows the Tea Party-led GOP effort to Repeal the still freshly-minted Health Care law won't make it through the Democrat-controlled Senate, but the Obama Administration isn't taking any chances: Should the Republican bill repealing Health Care reform make it to President Obama's desk, "He would Veto it," the White House said this evening. "The Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 2 (the Repeal bill ) b...

HRCs Hateful E-mail
A reader alerts me to an e-mail HRC President Joe Solmonese sent out yesterday (January 6), the day after Republicans took control of the United States House of Representatives. Entitled “Hateful leaders take over”, the missive warned of dark days ahead: Remember all those anti-gay Candidates who ran for office this year? As of yesterday, dozens of them are now members of Congress and the House of Representatives is under their control. . . . 2011 opens with a new, more conservativ...

Sides clash over cost of repealing health care law
Washington — Remember the faraway days of the 2010 Midterm Elections, when Republicans swept races across the country on a doggedly anti-spending, Deficit-reduction platform? Barely 24 hours into the 112th Congress, there’s been a major party role reversal: It’s the Democrats now who are the deficit hawks, and they’re laying into Republicans for playing fast and loose with the federal Budget. It all started with the first House vote. After swearing in their speaker and taking the oath

The reading of the U.S. Constitution in Congress was great (COMMENTARY)
That is the reason the Republicans performed the reading of the Constitution on Thursday, January 6, 2010, the day after the opening of the 112th Congress of the United States.  This was the first time this has been done in the history of the United States.  Yet, there were cries of foul, idiocy, and suspicion from the 'left' in Congress and beyond.  Some even blurted out the question: Why would you do that - read the Constitution in a session of Congress?  Why rea...