If at all you've been paying attention to the healthcare debate, you probably came across conservative whining soon after Speaker Pelosi released H.R. 3962. The conservative circle was referring to a blog on Politico by Jonathan Allen attempting to explain the aesthetics of the bill. Mr. Allen reported that the bill is 1990 pages long, running approximately 400,000 words. Further, he pointed to the estimated cost over 10 years of $894 billion and concluded in a rather unorthodox fashion that the bill costs $2.2 million per word!

"Shocking! Outrageous!" screamed the rank and file GOP, Minority Leader Boehner went as far as theatrically exhibiting what 1990 pages of legislation looks like when stacked up. There's even a new militaristic analysis being floated pointing to how long it would take a supersonic military jet to release a linear roll of dollar bills equivalent to $1.0 trillion while flying at the speed of sound: an impressive 14.4 years! Absolutely unbelievable, right?

Except, is the length of the bill really an issue? Did anyone bother to check the text and format of the bill? How does H.R. 3962 stack compared to other bills/Joint Resolutions/Laws passed or enacted in Congress?

Motivated by this seemingly juvenile use of statistics, I checked a few key bills and resolutions passed by Congress from The Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress.

First up was Public Law 108-173, the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003. P.L. 108-173 is 489 pages long, contains 175,903 words and is projected to cost $1.2 trillion. Applying what I will henceforth call, 'The JA Standard," the cost per word is $6.8 million. In case you have forgotten, this was the law that was controversially passed by a Republican Controlled Congress that is now famously known for duping the tax payer!

Then, there's H.J. Res 114, To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq. The Joint Resolution was only 5 pages long carrying 395 words. The cost of the war in Iraq thus far is estimated at $696 billion which by The JA Standard costs $352 million per word and still rising! Go figure.

Speaking of length in pages, this is one measure where I lay the blame squarely on the idiots formatting the document. As stated above, H.R 3962 contains about 400000 words in 1990 pages which is 200 words per page. P.L. 108-173, on the other hand, contains 175,903 words in 489 pages which is about 360 words per page. If H.R 3962 was to be formatted in the same style as P.L. 108-173, it would only contain roughly 1110 pages!!!!

As it turns out, the democrats don't quite have a spending problem, but are rather squarely sitting on a presentation problem. Republicans, on the other hand, are firmly rooted to ... you guessed it: Ignorance and at times convenient self-serving interpretation of facts and statistics!