Back in the olden days this is what passing a bill in Congress was like:

Back then the bill was read, and sat in Congress while it was debated.

Ah, for the good ole days…

Now a senator can make headlines by simply asking people to Read the Senate health bill yourself

“You’re going to hear a lot about this bill. That’s why I encourage you to read the bill yourself and form your own opinion,” Crapo said. “Take a close look at how the bill is funded and who and what it covers and doesn’t cover and how it may impact you and your family. It’s a real eye-opener!”

Crapo also reiterated plenty of Republican objections to the healthcare bill before encouraging Americans to read it. He said that the bill will increase federal spending, drive up healthcare costs, cut Medicare benefits and engender an intrusive government intervention into people’s healthcare plans.

The vote today is whether to open the debate,

On Wednesday, Nelson hinted he was gearing up to support the procedural motion Saturday. “It’s a motion to commence debate and an opportunity to make changes,” he said in a statement.

As Ed said, Harry Reid is

trying to follow Nancy Pelosi’s footsteps in jamming ObamaCare down the throats of a skeptical chamber before members can hear from their constituents.

This is what we’re in for:

• Medicare physician fees will get cut by about 20 percent beginning in 2011
• impose massive tax increases:  a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost insurance plans, and raise the Medicare payroll tax
• Over 20 years, Senate Democrats are thus planning to raise taxes on the American people by about $2.2 trillion. Even so, this massive tax hike still would not fully cover all of the spending in the Reid plan.
• Medicare cuts: On paper, the cuts are massive. CBO says they would total nearly $450 billion in Medicare over the first ten years, but then grow to about $1.9 trillion in the next decade.
• On paper, the Reid plan plus the “doc fix” would increase total federal spending by about $4.9 trillion over 20 years. Senate Democrats would resort to bracket creep and other tax hikes to raise $2.2 trillion over the same period

No wonder they don’t want you to read it.

UPDATE
James Taranto:

Accountability Journalism
An Associated Press dispatch, written by Erica Werner and Richard Alonso-Zaldivar, compares the House and Senate ObamaCare bills. We’d like to compare this dispatch to the AP’s dispatch earlier this week “fact checking” Sarah Palin’s new book. Here goes:

Number of AP reporters assigned to story:
• ObamaCare bills: 2
• Palin book: 11

Number of pages in document being covered:
• ObamaCare bills: 4,064
• Palin book: 432

Number of pages per AP reporter:
• ObamaCare bill: 2,032
• Palin book: 39.3

On a per-page basis, that is, the AP devoted 52 times as much manpower to the memoir of a former Republican officeholder as to a piece of legislation that will cost trillions of dollars and an untold number of lives. That’s what they call accountability journalism.