Please consider that Congress passed a Covid-19 Relief Bill that required 5593 pages of....

[RussellCattle]

....bullshit and complications that were necessary to get the people a little bit of help, while it only took 1246 pages for Great Britain and Europe to define an entirely new trade agreement. Years ago David Brinkley, when he was still doing the Huntley-Brinkley Report, did a commentary on the show opining that Congress should be required to have any new law that they passed be limited to a single sheet of 8 1/2 by 11 paper. He held that this would limit the amount of mischief that they could get into. Fifty years down the road and things have certainly got worse.

[Johnny2X2X]

1. Read up on this

This was a spending bill for 2021, the relief package was a part of it, probably took up a page or two. The rest details a large amount of government spending. I’d expect thousands of pages.

[Make7]

2. Looks like the Covid-19 related sections are 645 pages.

Division M: pages 1823–1923
Division N: pages 1924–2467

https://rules.house.gov/sites/democrats.rules.house.gov/files/BILLS-116HR133SA-RCP-116-68.pdf
(8 MB)

[lamp_shade]

3. Thank you Make7. I've been looking for this information.

[RussellCattle]

6. Thank you Make 7 - I was off base when I conflated the spending bill with the Covid 19 Relief....

....Bill that had been folded into it. I chose not to respond to "Johnny" and his claim of it being only a page or two, which, on face value, is ridiculous. Congress can't do anything without complicating it beyond recognition, which was my point in the first place.

[Make7]

8. The end of session bills can get all sorts of unrelated things added to them.

Not enough time to pass individual bills so they chuck them all into one big mess.

I read some comments about the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act (I think that's the name) included in this massive bill as an example of non-Covid related items that shouldn't be in there. These were complaints by Republican voters - none of them seemed to be aware how Mitch McConnell's press office was touting the passage of said Horseracing Integrity and Safety Act and remarking how the Majority Leader made it a top priority in the Senate. Clueless...

The average length of bills does seem to be ever increasing as time moves forward. I'm not sure if there is a remedy, but it does make following any legislation a considerable endeavor. Perhaps that's a feature, not a bug to the powers that be.

[Klaralven]

4. 25 lines per page, about 50 characters per line

With normal typography, it is probably less than 1500 pages.

[cally]

5. Why would it be better if it was shorter?

The bill changes the law. It is normal to print the entire section of the law code and highlight changes in the legal code so anyone voting on it or analyzing it can see the changes. It would be much worse for understanding legislation if this stopped.

Many times shorter and less legalize makes it worse and makes it easier for courts to misinterpret what was meant by legislation.

I have never understood the popular press pundits who complain about length of bills. In my earlier life I analyzed the impacts of bills before voting on them. Shorter is not better and is often much, much harder to analyze because you have to research what is hidden in the short version.

[RussellCattle]

7. Good point. More information is good. Would you say the bill is more likely to be 75% extra......

....background information or 75% extra pork?