Just for comparison.
The US Constitution contains 4,452 words, not counting signatures. Just the index of The House Health Care Reform bill contains 6,910 words, and the full bill contains over 600,000 words.
The US Constitution is hand-written on four pages of parchment, each measuring roughly 29 by 24 inches. The Health Care Reform bill is over 2000 8.5 by 11 inch double-spaced pages.
The US Constitution was written in less than 120 days. Work on the Health Care Reform bill began in March, 2009, and as of this writing (Feb 12, 2010) is still awaiting passage, and may never get there.
In The Federalist Papers, James Madison wrote the following:
It will be of little avail to the people, that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, or undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is to-day, can guess what it will be to-morrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule, which is little known, and less fixed?
I think we need a resolution that all Acts of Congress must be written out in longhand using a quill pen, and every member of Congress must personally create a copy for their state or district. That should cut down on the length of a bill, don't you think?
