So says (rightly) Andrew C. McCarthy, who says further (of the immigration bill):
...no “important legislation” should be 100 pages long, much less 1,200 (or the even more mind-boggling girth of monstrosities like Obamacare). . . .
You cannot have a functioning democratic republic when the laws are so voluminous no one can know what the law is. And that is especially the case when (a) the rationale for passing new laws — according to “reform” proponents like Senator Marco Rubio and Rep. Paul Ryan — is that we don’t enforce the laws currently on the books; (b) key parts of legislation consist of commitments to do what previously enacted law already commands; and (c) the president, notwithstanding his oath to take care that the laws are faithfully executed, claims the power to refrain from enforcing whatever laws he disapproves of. Washington has made a farce of the legislative process and of the once proud boast that we are ”a nation of laws not men.”
In his excellent little book A Matter of Interpretation, Justice Antonin Scalia recalls that the emperor Nero would post edicts high up on the pillars — it was a pretense of having the rule of law that barely camouflaged the reality of arbitrary and tyrranical enforcement. That is what we have now. It is what happens when a government gets so big no one any longer recognizes either the limits or why it is essential to have limits.
Whatever the merits of the legislation (and who can say with confidence what they are?), the senate process alone is reason enough to vote against it. World’s greatest deliberative body? It is astounding that any lawmaker could vote for this beast and still call himself a conservative supporter of limited government.