IRREGULAR ORDER

Democrats Slam ‘Handwritten’ Updates to Tax Bill

Senators took to social media on Friday evening to call out the hastily written bill, sharing images of handwritten notes scribbled on the sides of pages.

Before the Senate is set to vote on the GOP tax reform bill, a number of Democrats took to social media to express outrage at the hasty additions to the bill and sharing images of handwritten notes on the sides of some of the pages. “Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak – can anyone else read this?” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) wrote on Twitter.

“I was just handed a 479-page tax bill a few hours before the vote,” Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) wrote on Twitter, sharing a video in which he showed the sheer size of the bill. “One page literally has hand scribbled policy changes on it that can’t be read. This is Washington, D.C. at its worst. Montanans deserve so much better.”

“Any handwriting experts out there? I’d like to know what this says before they call for a vote. This is absurd,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) wrote.

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told The Daily Beast that the changes were written by hand for the sake of speed, adding that they will be printed into the bill text. "It’s a non-story. Obviously the staff is still making edits. They’ll be printed out. But they were saying, hey, we want to get it faster. They were trying to actually get it to them faster. And now they’re making a big deal of it. You can make a story out of anything. But it’s just goofy.”

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Gideon ResnickPolitical Reporter

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