I’d love to give U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a pop quiz this week. Here’s how it would go: 

In four hours, you can: 

a)      Get half of a good night’s sleep;

b)      Work a half-day;

c)      Go on a date (dinner and a movie);

d)     Begin and end debate among 435 Members of Congress on what will likely be the largest and most significant piece of legislation in the history of their public-service careers;

e)      A, B and C;

f)       All of the above. 

I’m afraid to say that I already know how Ms. Pelosi might answer – either F (all of the above) or D (legislative debate) depending on her own sleep, work and marital schedules – which, presumably, are not like the schedules of the rest of the world. (Interpret that however you will.) 

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Four hours. That’s what will happen this Friday if the House of Representatives sticks to their current schedule. They will spend just four hours – not even enough time to get paid for a full day of work – debating the House health-care bill. 

The bill is 1,990 pages long. And it will cost you an me, the American taxpayers, $1.2 trillion. 

If divided equally, each Member of Congress would get 33 seconds to speak their mind on the bill (which most probably haven’t even taken the time to read). So that’s $83 million per second of debate and $2.7 billion dollars per congressional vote. 

Sounds risky, no? 

On a normal/human level, I think that spending just four hours on this critical debate is something akin to spending thirty seconds debating with your unemployed spouse about whether to commit to a 30-year mortgage on a house you’ve only seen in photos during the riskiest real estate market slump of your lifetime. 

Debating the question of how to pay for this bill could take just two informed people four hours! The idea that the whole, mammoth bill can be suitably debated by 435 people in just 240 minutes is laughable. It means one thing: the bill is being rushed through. Period. 

Just. Four. Hours. It would be funny if it weren’t so serious.

Jean Card has been a professional writer in Washington, D.C. for more than a dozen years.  Today, she is freelance writing and consulting, full-time. Jean is a native of Vermont and a graduate of Middlebury College. She lives and writes in Alexandria, VA with her husband, a new puppy (adopted from PAWS Rescue of Northern Virginia) and two rather poorly-behaved cats (adopted from AdvoCATS).