Read the Bill Before You Vote on the Bill Act

Section 1. Short Title and Congressional Confession

This Act may be cited as the “Read the Bill Before You Vote on the Bill Act” or, for those who skipped to this section, the “You Had One Job Act of 2026.”

Congress finds and reluctantly admits:

(a) The Affordable Care Act was 2,700 pages long. Then-Speaker Pelosi noted that Congress would have to “pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”, which remains the single most honest statement ever made about the legislative process.

(b) The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 was 4,155 pages long and members were given approximately six hours to review it before voting. At the average adult reading speed of 250 words per page, reading the entire bill would have required approximately 69 hours — or roughly 11.5 times the review period provided.

(c) The 118th Congress passed fewer than 150 bills in two years, which is among the fewest in modern history. This suggests that members are neither reading bills nor voting on them, raising the question of what, exactly, they are doing.

(d) The House of Representatives is in session approximately 147 days per year, leaving 218 days during which members could, theoretically, be reading.

(e) The Congressional Record permits members to revise and extend their remarks after the fact, meaning that even the official record of what was said is not necessarily what was said, which is a separate problem but worth mentioning while we have your attention.

Section 2. The Reading Certification Requirement

2(a). General Mandate

No member of the House of Representatives or the Senate shall cast a vote on any bill, resolution, or amendment unless that member has personally certified, under penalty of perjury, that they have read the complete text of the legislation in question.

2(b). Definition of “Read”

For the purposes of this Act, “read” means the sequential visual processing of every word in the legislation, from the enacting clause to the final period. The following do not constitute reading:

1. Skimming the table of contents
2. Reading a summary prepared by a staffer named Kyle
3. Being told “it’s fine” by leadership
4. Glancing at a one-pager with bullet points and clip art
5. Hearing about the bill on cable news
6. Having the bill exist in the same room as you while you check your phone

Section 3. The Congressional Reading Speed Assessment Program

3(a). Baseline Assessment

Upon taking office, each member of Congress shall complete a standardized reading assessment administered by the Congressional Reading Speed Assessment Program (CRSAP). Results shall be:

• Made public on the Congressional Record
• Posted in the member’s office alongside their diplomas
• Used to calculate the minimum review period each member personally requires before voting

3(b). Reading Speed Tiers

Members shall be classified into the following tiers based on their assessed reading speed:

• Tier A: “Literate” — 300+ words per minute
• Tier B: “Functional” — 200-299 words per minute
• Tier C: “Concerning” — 100-199 words per minute
• Tier D: “Are You Moving Your Lips?” — Below 100 words per minute

3(c). Minimum Review Periods

Based on the assessed reading speed of the slowest member of each chamber, a minimum review period shall be established for every bill. For a bill the length of the FY2023 omnibus (4,155 pages, approximately 1,038,750 words), the calculated review periods are:

Reading Tier	Time to Read Full Omnibus	Time Actually Given
Tier A	57.6 hours	6 hours
Tier B	86.6 hours	6 hours
Tier C	173.1 hours	6 hours
Tier D	346.3 hours	6 hours

The committee notes that even the fastest readers in Congress would need nearly 10 times the review period that was actually provided. The slowest readers would need over two weeks. This is presented without commentary because the numbers speak for themselves, loudly.

Section 4. The Comprehension Certification

4(a). Quiz Requirement

After certifying they have read a bill, members must pass a Comprehension Quiz covering the actual contents of the legislation. The quiz shall be:

• Written by retired eighth-grade English teachers, because they are the only people left in America who still believe in reading comprehension
• Administered in a monitored testing environment, without staff, phones, or lobbyist-provided cheat sheets
• Graded on a pass/fail basis, with a passing score of 70%

4(b). Sample Quiz Questions

The committee offers the following sample questions for a hypothetical omnibus spending bill:

Question 1: This 4,155-page bill allocates $1.7 trillion in federal spending. In Section 2,847, what specific program receives $14.3 million? (a) You don’t know. (b) Nobody knows. (c) The person who inserted it knows but isn’t telling. (d) All of the above.

Question 2: True or False: You have read this bill. (Note: answering “True” while also completing the quiz in under six hours constitutes perjury.)

4(c). Consequences of Failure

Members who fail the Comprehension Quiz may not vote on the bill in question and shall be listed on the Capitol Rotunda Legislative Literacy Leaderboard under the heading “Did Not Read.”

Section 5. The TL;DR Mandate

5(a). Summary Requirement

Every bill exceeding 100 pages in length shall include an official TL;DR Summary of no more than 500 words, written in plain English, placed on the first page of the legislation, summarizing:

1. What the bill actually does (not what it is titled)
2. How much it costs (actual number, not “offset by future savings”)
3. Who benefits (actual entities, not “the American people” unless it is literally every American person)
4. What was added at the last minute that has nothing to do with the bill’s stated purpose

5(b). Title Accuracy Audit

The TL;DR Summary shall include a Title Accuracy Score rating how well the bill’s official title describes its actual contents, on a scale from 1 (“Accurate”) to 10 (“This Title Is a Work of Fiction”). The committee notes that the “Inflation Reduction Act” and the “PATRIOT Act” would both score above an 8.

Section 6. The Cheesecake Factory Exemption

6(a). Short Bill Exemption

Bills shorter than 20 pages are exempt from the reading certification requirement, on the theory that 20 pages is shorter than a Cheesecake Factory menu and if members cannot manage that, there is no legislative remedy sufficient to address the problem.

6(b). Length Comparison Index

The Congressional Budget Office shall maintain a Length Comparison Index placing each bill’s page count in context:

• Under 20 pages: “Shorter than a Cheesecake Factory menu”
• 20-100 pages: “About the length of a John Grisham novel”
• 100-500 pages: “Approaching the collected works of Dr. Seuss”
• 500-2,000 pages: “War and Peace territory”
• 2,000-4,000 pages: “Congratulations, you have written an encyclopedia”
• 4,000+ pages: “Nobody is reading this and you know it”

Section 7. Effective Date and Self-Aware Irony

This Act shall take effect 90 days after enactment, assuming it is enacted, which it was not, because nobody read it.

Committee Note: The Committee on Legislative Literacy approved this bill 6-0, with 28 members absent. The six members who voted had, by their own admission, only read the title page, the TL;DR section, and “most of Section 6 because it mentioned the Cheesecake Factory.” The committee chair described this as “a strong showing, relative to institutional norms.”

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This bill received 6 yea votes and 429 nay votes. The six yea votes came from the bill’s sponsor, one cosponsor who had a personal grudge against the omnibus process, and four freshmen who had not yet learned how things work around here. Of the 429 nay votes, exit polling indicated that 412 members had not read the bill, 14 had read “parts of it,” and 3 said they had read it but could not describe any of its provisions. The bill’s sponsor released a statement calling the outcome “the most predictable vote in the history of representative democracy.”