Don't feel bad if you haven't because virtually no one else has read it either.

It is a 1200 page monstrosity of a bill that Stacy McCain points out is about as transparent as cotton candy:

Here's the timeline [for HR 2454]:

• Introduced - 5/15/09
• Reported with amendments out of Energy & Commerce - 6/5/09
• Discharged by Education & Labor and Foreign Affairs Committees - 6/5/09
• Discharged by Financial Services, Science & Technology, Transportation, Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Ways & Means Committees - 6/19/09
• Placed on the Union Calendar, Calendar No. 90 - 6/19/09 (This version is 946 pages)
• Submitted to House Rules Committee - 6/22/09, 4:22pm (This version is 1,201 pages)

So, where along the line does the bill suddenly expand by 300 pages? According to the New York Times, the various committee chairs held behind the scenes meetings and hashed out a compromise with no allowance for public input. (What lobbyists were involved in those meetings?) And now we are expecting a Friday vote on a bill that has had no public hearing in a committee with jurisdiction over it and that is not yet available in the main engine of public disclosure, THOMAS.

This raises serious questions about how we expect Congress to disclose their activities to the public. Is a bill posted to the House Rules Committee and not THOMAS truly publicly available? While the bill may be available for 72 hours prior to consideration, the public does not have reasonable access to it. Nor does the public know how the final details were reached.