Herman Cain: I Won’t Sign Any Bill More Than Three Pages Long

GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

If he were president, Herman Cain wouldn’t sign any bill so lengthy that an average American family couldn’t digest it along with their pizza dinner.

As Think Progress first reported on Monday, Cain fired up attendees at an event in Iowa by decrying bulky bills that he said are so long that common people don’t have time to read their full text. In particular, he knocked the health care overhaul, which he claimed members of the Obama administration hadn’t even read.

Cain said:

Don’t try to pass a 2,700 page bill. And even they didn’t read it! You and I didn’t have time to read it. We were too busy trying to live, send our kids to school. That’s why I am only going to allow small bills — three pages. You’ll have time to read that one over the dinner table.

As Think Progress’ Marie Diamond noted, if Cain were true to his word, he would have nixed such landmark legislation as the Civil Rights Act and the Patriot Act — and even the Bush tax cuts for that matter.

Cain has shot up lately in polls of the GOP field, in part thanks to his participation in a televised debate moderated by Fox News, and also by the departure of Mike Huckabee and Donald Trump from the race. But in raising his public image, he’s also left a trail of questionable statements he’s later had to walk back. In one widely publicized incident, he said he wouldn’t appoint any Muslims to a Cain administration because he couldn’t trust them 100%. More recently, he criticized Obama’s Israel policy, but then offered up a jumbled one of his own which he later sought to clarify.

Latest DC
Comments
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: