I've heard countless Republicans complain about the 1000 page bill from the house (H.R. 3200). Which led me to wonder - how much of a legitimate complaint is that, really?
Not much of one, actually.
Going through the bill itself, I've selected random pages, cutting and pasting into word, removing the line numbers and checking out the word count. It averages about 170. Most novels have average page word counts over 300.
Here's an average randomly-selected "page" without the formatting imposed by the Government Printing Office:
paragraph (1), there shall be a determination of whether the individual is a Medicaid-eligible individual. If the individual is determined to be so eligible, the Commissioner, through the Medicaid memorandum of understanding, shall provide for the enrollment of the individual under the State Medicaid plan in accordance with the Medicaid memorandum of understanding. In the case of such an enrollment, the State shall provide for the same periodic redetermination of eligibility under Medicaid as would otherwise apply if the individual had directly applied for medical assistance to the State Medicaid agency.
(c) USE OF AFFORDABILITY CREDITS.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—In Y1 and Y2 an affordable credit eligible individual may use an affordability credit only with respect to a basic plan.
(2) FLEXIBILITY IN PLAN ENROLLMENT AUTHORIZED.—Beginning with Y3, the Commissioner shall establish a process to allow an affordability credit to be used for enrollees in enhanced or premium plans. In the case of an affordable credit eligible individual who enrolls in an enhanced or premium plan, the individual shall be responsible for any difference between the premium for such plan
That's it!! A whole page! And it's Proust, compared to much of the remaining document...
Indeed, taking the entire text from the "printer friendly" version available online and putting it into OpenOffice, I found the document without the silly margins and large type to be about 404 pages. Total word count? 162,963
That might seem like a lot, but keep in mind: that is less than the word count of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which - for those of you who are curious - is 190,637 (Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is more as well, at 168,923!
TELL ME THERE AREN'T THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN WHO WEREN'T ABLE TO READ EITHER OF THOSE BOOKS OVER A WEEKEND! Any fool could read either of those in a month, certainly.
(It's also less than a quarter of the length of Atlas Shrugged, for what it's worth.)
Hey, there's also lots of tables of contents in there as well - certainly, for reference, it's understandable, but not really part of the text. Cut 'em out, and the bill is 159,021 words, which is just a few more words than the entire text of Angels and Demons and certainly less than The DaVinci Code.
"But!" your average Republican House Member might retort, "It's not a beach book! It's complicated! It's labyrinthine in its content! It's far-reaching in its scope!"
That may be true, but you know what it also is?
It's your fucking job.