Moby-Dick is over 600 pages long. Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch is more than 700. President Donald Trump’s updated budget reconciliation bill—literally titled the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act”—comes in at 940 pages, just shy of the entire The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
In the space it takes Frodo to walk from the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom, Republicans lay out a sprawling series of measures that include $3.8 trillion in tax cuts and spending that could add as much as $4.5 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
The OBBB has a self-imposed deadline of July 4 to pass the Senate, but Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has now delayed the process by defiantly requiring that the entire thing be read out loud.
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Schumer told fellow Democrats on Saturday that he will force Senate clerks to read the bill in its entirety, according to The Hill, a process that is expected to take at least 15 hours.
The move is designed to slow the bill’s passage, giving Americans the chance to hear what is actually in this vast piece of legislation. Out-loud readings are offered by Senate clerks, but it’s a service almost always declined by lawmakers.
“Schumer believes Americans deserve to hear exactly what’s in this monstrosity: permanent tax breaks for billionaires, millions of Americans losing health care and food assistance, giveaways to fossil fuel companies, and land sales to the highest bidder—all paid for by working families,” a person familiar with the situation told Politico.
While 15 hours might sound like a long time, according to Spotify, The Lord of the Rings audiobook takes 2 days, 17 hours, and 17 minutes, meaning it is likely lawmakers will only be getting a skimmed version of the megabill that is set to have weighty consequences for the future of America.
The bill itself is packed full of perks for Republican lawmakers, threats to democracy, and has been described as a “murder-suicide pact” between Republicans and the American people.
Which may come as a surprise to some Republicans, as a few have let it slip that they did not even read what they were signing the public up for when they agreed to it. MAGA diehard Marjorie Taylor Greene expressed her regret in voting for the OBBB after—“full transparency”—she admitted she “did not know” what was in it.
Even Trump appeared surprised by some of the bill’s contents. Taking, as always, to social media in his usual all-caps style, Trump wrote that he “hates” the “green tax credits” buried deep in the the monstrous tome.
The OBBB passed the House of Representatives by a margin of just one vote and Republican Senators can only lose three votes if the bill is to pass. Three GOP lawmakers have, at present, indicated that they are likely to vote against it. (The bill’s most vocal critic, Rand Paul, was seen golfing with the president on Saturday morning.)
Whether Schumer’s enforced trudge through the bill changes any minds remains to be seen.
