New beef from Kit & Blaine: Climate bill is just too long to read

Sen. Kit Bond and Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer are concerned the climate change legislation now under consideration by the Senate is too long and complicated to be effective.

In their mind, the details, compromises and allowances for coal-dependant states (like Missouri) included in the House's bill aren't signs of strength for the comprehensive energy policy -- they're signs that it's too hard for their staffs to understand.

Speaking Tuesday to a Senate Committee, Bond expressed deep concern that he didn't know which bill was actually passed by the House. He asked, "Some say that we should just look to the bill the House passed last month - and to that I say which one?" 

My thought is that one should look at the bill that actually passed (it's online and everything!), but that seems too obvious. 

To illustrate his point, Bond stacked up the versions of the bill he could find and announced that if you stacked all of the versions that weren't passed on top of the version that did pass , you'd have 6,706 pages.  Oh noes!

Bond even had a staff member take a picture of all of the versions piled on top of each other, just help us understand that if we read all of the versions that didn't pass, plus the one that did, it would be really, really hard.

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has a similar concern. In this week's Blaine Buzz, he discusses his desire for legislation more suitable to simpletons. He also uses the same chart presented by Bond at the Tuesday hearing to show what they believe will be a "bureaucratic nightmare," though Blaine was only able to find a far less impressive 8.5 x 11 version.

Energy audits!  Efficiencies!  $3,000-$4,000 per year!**  Really bad!  Real tragedies!

What makes their chart so hilarious is that very few of the boxes on this "nightmarish" structure have anything to do with bureaucratic agencies. Take a look:

A flowchart with just the bureaucracies in the "bureaucratic nightmare" wouldn't be very scary, so they've helpfully added lots of pretend agencies.  (I've never been to the US Department of Food Prices, but I hear they've got a great office space.)

Presumably, the GOP's so-called "All of the Above" Energy Policy doesn't have any details, or involve any government agencies, or have any consequences, making it a far more attractive proposal to leaders like Bond and Luetkemeyer.

**And yes, for those of you wondering, Blaine is still full of it on what the legislation will cost.

(h/t The Grist; Image credits: Post-Dispatch, AP, Information Liberation)