Lil White Lies: Bill is a 4-Letter Word

This past June, PolitiFact (PF) published a Pants on Fire ruling on a statement by Jim DeMint : "Ninety-four percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure." They concluded DeMint “stacked the deck” with the total number of bills he used (from which he got the 94%) from the CRS (Congressional Research Service).

This PF ruling was quite confusing, as there were two versions (here's the first) PF published because of all the complaints it received. I kept reading both of them and got very, well, confused, too, as it seemed to me their initial analysis was turned on its head. And it took me a while to get this written up to where it made sense to me.

Part of my condensed “critique the critique” is to re-state what Bryan White would want PF’s ruling to be based on his interpretation.

This would be MY initial PF interpretation: "Ninety-four percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure." It was found that of these 911 bills to which he refers, 535 were non-binding, concurrent resolutions. 122 of the remaining were non-debate, non-voting resolutions. That’s 657 bills out of 911, or 72.1%, that had no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure. That’s fairly close to 94%.

ON THE OTHER HAND, the revised PF interpretation would be: if you leave out the 535 non-binding, non-voting resolutions, you have 376 left. 122 of these were non-debate, non-voting measures. That leaves you with 254 debated, voted bills. But of those 254, 112 bills were counted that were debated or had roll call or voice votes recorded. So 254 -112 = 142 bills that could have been debated or voted on but passed unanimously. So 142/254=55.9%. That’s still far off from 94%.

Louis Jacobson’s new report righted the numbers up. PF must have realized following complaints that the 911 denominator was in error if they weren’t recognizing those 535 “measures” and that the number should as Jacobson said in the beginning be “whether the percentage DeMint cites is accurate”—that is, accurate for non-debate, non-voting, unanimous consent measures. For all his commentary, however, that Jacobson’s presentation was improved, Bryan in his re-write decided to up the ante and basically declared the 94% should stand: "The statement is literally true, and DeMint appears to make the underlying argument that Congress does a great deal of its business using unanimous consent."

Bryan based the first Grading PolitiFact calculation of 67.6% on 254/376. He reluctantly decided to exclude those 535 bills that he thought should “count for something.” He turned it upside down as well, however, by computing the percentage of debating/voting bills of the total. He should have used the 122/376 (32.4%), because that was the “percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure.” But then he couldn’t absolve Republican Jim DeMint’s fact-check by doing it that way. But no worry, on PF Round 2, he made up his mind and went with my PF Guideline #1 of staying with the truth of the statement (this time, his excuse, not PF’s) that DeMint had to be 100% in the right. Or 94% depending on how you look at it.

So, what IS the meaning of the word “bill”? “Bill” could have been used by DeMint in a generic sense, for example, Wikipedia, in its description of how the U.S. congress works, has a section on the numbering of bills which include bills and resolutions: “Legislatures give bills numbers as they progress. In the United States, all bills originating in the U.S. House of Representatives begin with "H.R." and all bills originating from the U.S. Senate begin with an "S”.’

However, the Library of Congress (as well as the UIC Law Department) appear to make a clear distinction between a bill/joint resolution and concurrent/simple resolutions. The Thomas Library of Congress states there is “little practical difference between a bill and a joint resolution” and “the two forms are sometimes used interchangeably.”

The UIC begins “Legislative law originates as a bill or resolution….” Thomas Library of Congress continues from the previous paragraph, “… A concurrent resolution is not equivalent to a bill and its use is narrowly limited within these bounds” which is consistent with PF’s second fact-check: “…The CRS report does not consider them bills..” A simple resolution is defined as “…A matter concerning the rules, the operation, or the opinion of either House alone is initiated by a simple resolution.” That doesn’t sound like a bill, either, it sounds like it’s even less than a concurrent, a sub-category.

Bryan stated that when DeMint made these remarks “DeMint's primary audience that day consisted of his colleagues in the Senate. Senators will very likely understand the operation of unanimous consent. For that reason, DeMint should receive the benefit of the doubt in assessing whether he intended his remarks as absolute.” I say he should NOT receive the benefit of the doubt because the senators most likely knew the difference between bills and concurrent/simple resolutions as defined above. After all, it’s like—part of their job description!

DeMint said there are all these "bills" that get passed that "... have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure and, very often, no score from the Congressional Budget Office.” That's because many of them, bills or not, don't require debate, vote, amendments, reading, disclosure, etc.

So again, it comes down to a judgment call. If you feel the 535 non-binding, non-voting resolutions, which the library of congress says are not equivalent to bills, plus other “bills” like naming post offices and government facilities, should not be included as bills, and that they are just “resolutions” or "measures", then PF’s case is correct.  If not, you’re in Bryan’s camp.

IMHO, however, DeMint's statement did not merit a Pants on Fire by PolitiFact's own definition.  It was inaccurate (false), but it was not a ridiculous claim.

Title and Link	June 17, 2010: "Ninety-four percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure." (Click here for the original)
Who? Affiliation	Jim DeMint, Republican
Ruling	Pants on Fire
Checkers	Louis Jacobson (Writer/Researcher); Bill Adair (Editor)
# of words	1,480 (the re-write, including Editor’s Note); 736 (original)
#Sources Cited	6
Argument Summary	DeMint “stacked the deck” by exaggerating the number of non-bills (simple and concurrent resolutions) in the figure on which the 94% was calculated.
Bryan’s Argument and “IS” word or Expression (Click here for original)	The IS word: BILL. Once the 535 non-binding “bills” are removed, they should not be included in the percentage total if they are not bills as PF has stated. Once subtracting 535 from 911, you get 376, and the 122 subtracted out as non-debatable/non-voting left 254, so it should be 254/376 = 67.6% . On second thought, a bill is a bill is a bill. PF arbitrarily decided what a bill is. DeMint is right.
Quick Interpretation	After the re-write, they did it the way Bryan noted, but instead of 376 decided on 254 as their denominator after extracting the number of bills that had debate and voting to arrive at 142 which they divided by the 254, for 55.9% for bills with no debate or vote which passed unanimously.
My criticism:	It may have been better for PF to start their focus on verifying whether 56 or 6 percent (100-94) of the bills DeMint said received debate and voting and weren’t passed by unanimous consent.   This was just too messy.
Guidelines PF Excuses	(2) Subjectivity: Agenda of charitable interpretation.  What is a "bill"?
Rhetorical Devices/Logic fallacies	PF equivocated (according to Bryan) by arbitrarily deciding on its own what was meant by “bill."  (But then, so did Bryan)
DOES IT CHANGE THE RULING?	Completely flips it, Pants on Fire to at least Mostly True.
My view	The 535 non-binding, concurrent resolutions have to go.
Comments	Again, TOO many numbers lead to confusion. 327 bills and joint resolutions out of 855, which is 911 less the 56….but if you add the 56 to the 327 you get 383, so somewhere there are 7 bills overlapping (911 less 535 = 376). 376 should be fixed denominator with a listed breakdown, not in a paragraph written description.
Consequences of Bryan’s interpretation (What I have to believe if he is correct)	"Ninety-four percent of the bills that pass the Senate have no debate, no vote, no amendments, no reading of the bill, no online disclosure." It was found that of these 911 bills, 535 were non-binding, concurrent resolutions. That leaves 376 bills of which 122 were non-debate, non-voting resolutions. That leaves 254 measures which were bills of any substance. 254 out of 376 is 67.6%. Close enough. Jim DeMint’s statement is Mostly True. After re-write: “DeMint's percentage figure (94%) was accurate, and he could have chosen a more appropriate measure.”
Bryan’s Grade	Three Peppy LePews (for “systematically excusing” DeMint)
PF Grade	Five Peppy LePews (for messing it up)