GOPers Join ‘Read-the-Bill Movement’ to Slow Health Care Debate

By David Weigel 7/30/09 4:15 PM

In early July, settled in at one of Grover Norquist’s conservative movement breakfast meetings, Colin Hanna and Peter Roff had a brainstorm. Hanna, who commutes to Washington from the Wilmington, Delaware offices of his organization Let Freedom Ring, speculated that Americans were concerned about Congress considering a health care bill that not every member had read. Roff, a senior fellow at the libertarian Institute for Liberty, suggested that there was a way to take advantage of this. Members of Congress could be put to the test: No vote on health care unless they’d read the entire bill.

“The credit for the actual idea, I want to give to Peter,” Hanna told TWI on Wednesday. “From there we refined the language and we came up with our respective pledges for members of Congress.”