Topic: CNSNews.com
The next round of CNS' interns pestering members of Congress with gotcha questions designed to forward right-wing narratives focused on the infrastructure bill, asking them: "Will you read all 2,702 pages of the infrastructure bill before voting on it?" Some senators got this follow-up question: "And do you believe any of your colleagues will read all pages before voting?" But this approach may not have worked out for CNS narrative-wise as much as it would have liked.
The first victim was Republican Ted Cruz, who responded by ranting, "Nope, I’m going to vote no, and I don’t need to read 2,700 pages to know why I’m going to vote no."CNS may have thought that this showed Cruz as being opposed to more spending -- the intern framed it as Cruz having "expressed his concern over how the bills would affect the current and future state of the nation’s economy" -- but it instead showed him to be a kneejerk right-winger who has no interest in reaching common ground to help Americans and will oppose anything Democrats propose simply because Democrats proposed it.
As usual, there were numerous other senatorial targets, most of whom pointed out that they have staff members who read those bills:
- Roger Wicker (R)
- Bob Casey (D)
- Mike Rounds (R)
- Sheldon Whitehouse (D)
- Mike Braun (R)
- Ron Johnson (R)
- James Lankford, Joni Ernst and Mike Crapo (R)
- Richard Shelby (R)
- Dick Durbin (D)
- Marco Rubio (R)
- John Kennedy (R)
- Dianne Feinstein (D)
- Josh Hawley (R)
- Richard Blumenthal (D)
- Roy Blunt (R)
- Chuck Grassley (R)
- Steve Daines (R)
- Tammy Baldwin (D)
- Pat Toomey (R)
- Chris Van Hollen (D), Raphael Warnock (D) and Jerry Moran (R)
- Brian Schatz (D)
- Joe Manchin (D)
- Tom Carper (D)
- John Boozman (R), Tim Kaine (D) and Bill Cassidy (R)
The question is disingenuous because lengthy bills have always been a part of legislating on the federal level, members of Congress are busy enough that they can't possibly read every single piece of legislation that goes through Congress, and they have staffs to do the reading and related research that they don't have time to do. CNS knows all this -- but the narrative is more important than the truth, which is why the interns were sent out to badger senators with it.
