WaPo: Tax Bill Required 28 Percent of Weekend to Read

It is safe to assume House lawmakers likely did not read the new tax bill before they voted Tuesday — since it would have taken a commitment of 28 percent of their waking hours, The Washington Post analysis showed.

The Post broke down the estimated reading time using a tool at niram.org that measures reading speed, assuming the person is reading at 200 words a minute.

With that measurement, it would have taken six hours to read the approximate 72,000 words in the bill, and 19.4 hours to sift through the 232,000 words in the conference report over last weekend, the Post analysis figured.

Then, assuming a lawmaker slept six hours a night, the analysis determined it would take the person 69 waking hours to read the conference report – or 28 percent of their eyes-wide-open time over last weekend.

Should that same lawmaker want to read the bill as well, it would take 36.8 percent of their time — and 41.7 percent if they slept eight hours a night, the Post reported.

The analysis found things were not so bleak, considering lawmakers would likely skip over parts of the bill that were in prior versions — shaving down their reading time to 10 minutes of every waking hour from 17 minutes.

The Post's Philip Bump chided House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., for having spent "zero minutes" reading the newly passed bill since "he announced his support for the not-yet-existent final version back in November."

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