There is a rule in the House of Representatives that requires the text of proposed legislation to be available for reading by members at least 72 hours, or three days, before the measure can be voted on by the lower chamber of Congress.

But politicians being politicians, the House also has multiple ways of getting around that rule, including outright suspending the rules, adopting a rule specifically tailored to nullify the requirement for a particular proposal, and others. The House can even divide one day into two legislative days if that's needed to get around the 72-hour requirement.

The result, according to congress.gov, is that "the House has several means by which it can choose to waive these availability requirements and call up, debate, and vote on a measure in a single calendar day even if the text of the measure was not made available prior to consideration."

There is also a clause in Article 1 of the Constitution that requires a bill being considered in the House be read aloud three times before it can be considered. "Waiving availability requirements allows the House to act quickly when necessary, such as near the end of a session," congress.gov tells us.

So why am I belaboring this point? Two reasons.

First, to emphasize the reality that every senator and every representative in the final analysis is a politician, and politicians almost invariably act in their own self-interest — in this particular case, so their staffers instead of them are stuck with the laborious task of actually reading proposed legislation.

(This is, by the way, just one of the many reasons why people outside of Washington, D.C. should be much more aware of and concerned about the behind-the-scenes influence on congressmen of the more than 12,000+ mostly young men and women who serve as congressional staffers).

Second, to focus readers' attention on the bad things that can happen when senators and representatives vote on legislative proposals that go on and on for multi-hundreds and thousands of pages that the elected officials don't read.

Take, for example, President Donald Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2026 (OBBB) that required carefully and closely reading 870 pages in order to digest the full implications of what was contained in the proposal.

There was much to be praised in the OBBB, but, as is always the case, and even more so the more pages a proposal requires, the excessive page count leaves lots of room for "stuff" that may not be praiseworthy.

Brad Wilcox and Maria Baer of the Institute for Family Studies (IFS) posted recently an analysis of the pro-family provisions of the OBBB that illustrates the importance of close reading legislative materials to determine precisely what they do if enacted. They prefaced their analysis with these words, with which no doubt everybody reading this column would agree:

"More money, more choices for all working families with young children. Sounds like a good family policy approach in a day and age when fertility has hit record lows and people routinely mention the costs of raising kids as one reason they are not having the children they would otherwise like to have."  

And there are multiple provisions in the OBBB that can be viewed as pro-family. But as the IFS authors explain in detail, ya gotta read it closely. For one thing, the Senate version of the OBBB reduced the Child Tax Credit (CTC) from the House version of $2,500 to $2,200.

But wait! There's more!!

The Senate action "meant that the Senate version of the CTC did not even keep its value from Trump’s first term after adjusting for inflation. So much for serving the majority of the parents who voted Republican in 2024.

"Not only did the Republican Senate not take the opportunity to match the House’s generosity regarding the child tax credit, they also inexplicably boosted three different policies that only serve families who rely on paid child care outside the home."

There is an important distinction to be made here. There are two kinds of family involved in these matters — those with one working spouse (Dad) and a stay-at-home spouse (Mom) and one or more children, and those with two working spouses and one or more children who must be in paid child daycare.

The "three different polices" Wilcox and Baer examine include the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit, which Senate GOPers doubled from $1,200 to $2,100; the expanded flexible spending accounts, the Dependents Care Assistance Plan (DCAP); and the 45F business tax credits that cover child care.

Those three measures are of immense value to the two-earner families with kids in day care, but they do nothing for the traditional families in which Dad works and Mom works from home caring for the kids. And guess what — there are far more of the latter than of the former, as illustrated by this chart prepared by Wilcox and Baer:

No wonder Wilcox and Baer note:

"In fact, just 27% of kids ages 5 and under are enrolled in paid child care, according to the 2024 Current Population Survey’s Annual Social and Economic Supplement (CPS ASEC). These kids disproportionately come from middle- or upper-class families, with highly educated parents, and are living in some of the most educated and advantaged areas of the country—places like Cambridge, Massachusetts; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Washington, D.C. The average income of families utilizing paid child care in the U.S. is nearly $180,000.

"This was an unforced error on the part of Senate Republicans. Rather than catering to the most privileged parents who choose to work outside the home, allowing all parents to keep more of their own money each time they grow their family would benefit all families. And it would have sent a much better message."

Given the data and political realities, it's hard to argue with Wilcox and Baer.   

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