X was on fire late Thursday night when a major confrontation erupted between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. The US President threatened to cancel government contracts with Musk’s companies and the Tesla CEO accused Trump of involvement in the Jeffery Epstein Child Sex Abuse scandal. At one point, Elon Musk was calling for Donald Trump to be impeached and JD Vance to be sworn in as the next president.
A lot of water has flown under the bridge since then. People close to both parties in the conflict appear to be leading efforts to mediate a detente between the two. There is also a conversation scheduled to happen on Friday between Elon Musk and Trump in order to reach a compromise. However, it is not yet clear how a compromise is possible after allegations of pedophilia are exchanged.
A major story that has escaped attention amidst all of this is a revelation that came from House Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. During the whole controversy surrounding the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, Greene revealed that she voted for it in the House without fully reading its text.
Greene announced on X, “Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years. I am adamantly OPPOSED to this and it is a violation of state rights and I would have voted NO if I had known this was in there.”
Like many other Bills, the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ too was passed hastily without giving lawmakers sufficient times to read it. Representative Thomas Massie revealed that House Speaker Mike Johnson circumvented several rules in order to pass the Bill. He said that there’s a rule mandating that a Bill needs to be posted at least 72 hours before it is passed. That rule was circumvented by Johnson.
Another rule mandates that at least 24 hours needs to pass before a Bill can be voted upon after modification by a rules committee. He said that “members of congress didn’t even know what was in this bill until the night it passed.” Elon Musk has cited these concerns to urge representatives and senators to ‘Kill the Bill’.
The total length of the Big Beautiful Bill exceeds a thousand pages, 1,116 pages and nearly 500,000 words to be precise. For comparison, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy is roughly 1,200 pages and about 481,000 words. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is roughly 432 pages long and 122,000 words. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is roughly 488 pages with 160,000 words.
It is humanely impossible for any individual to read these texts entirely within a few days, let alone hours. Lawmakers are not only expected to read a Bill before it passed but go through it in minute detail, estimate the impact that it would have on their constituents and deliberate upon various novel measures included in them before participating in the debate.
None of this was followed during the passage of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’. The Bill is estimated to add $2.4 trillion to the national debt, will cut access to Medicaid for a lot of people and impact Americans in sorts of ways. Yet, lawmakers did not even bother to read the Bill in its entirety, much less deliberate upon its provisions, before it was hastily passed on the floor of the House.
Democracy is advertised as rule of the people, by the people and for the people. Here we have elected representatives who are meant to represent the Will of the People who enact laws without even bothering to read them. It begs the question, then, who holds actual power? The elected representatives or the unelected lobbyists who write the laws?
Whose interests are being represented in the texts of these Bills? If lawmakers are going to pass Bills that they haven’t even read, what is the purpose of elections then? Why not outsource every tenet of governance to lobbies that are not accountable to anyone but themselves? Because, clearly they are getting their way anyway. It would at least end the farcical practice of elections and save some dollars in the process. It would also save the voters from the humiliation that it is.
Key Takeaway from Elon Musk vs Donald Trump Spat: Whither Democracy?
American lawmakers voting on Bills they haven’t read is a practice so normalised that it does not even raise eyebrows anymore. Indeed, it is a greater surprise when they do take the trouble of reading the texts. This practice has been followed for at least 25 years. Who could forget the manner in which The Patriot Act was passed?
The Patriot Act gives the US Government to spy on millions of Americans without a valid warrant. Section 215 of the Act permitted the bulk collection of the personal data of millions of Americans without probable cause or individual warrants. This blatant overreach of Government Surveillance was enacted into law within 4 days, only a month and a half after the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks.
The final version of the Bill was introduced in the House of Representatives on the 23rd of October, 2001. It was voted on the next day. A day later, the US Senate passed it. And President George Bush signed it into law on October 26, 2001. The Bill is 342 pages long. Many lawmakers admitted later that they had not read the full Bill before voting on it.
It should have been a far bigger scandal than it was. Lawmakers passed an Act widely considered to be unconstitutional without even reading it. 24 years later, the practice still continues unabated. Global institutions would continue to rate American Democracy very highly nonetheless. But one is forced to ask, Whither Democracy?
