Unfortunately, that’s what happened in the U.S. Capitol on Monday. The text for the latest COVID-19 stimulus bill was scheduled to go out to lawmakers on Monday so that they could read it before voting began later in the day. Lawmakers, however, had to wait hours before receiving the text when some unfortunate computer glitches occurred.
According to Business Insider, some printer malfunctions delayed the distribution of physical copies of the 5,500-page bill text. At the same time, a corrupted file created a computer glitch that caused a similar delay in the process of uploading the text to congressional computers. The bill, which some have speculated may be the longest in page length that Congress has ever passed, is so big, in part, because it is a combination of the COVID-19 stimulus bill and the omnibus bill to secure government funding and prevent a shutdown.
The bill text was finally uploaded at about 2 p.m. on Monday, with votes scheduled to take place not long after.
Hearing printer delays involved in Coronabus holdup. May be the longest bill ever passed by Congress in page length — Erik Wasson (@elwasson) December 21, 2020
It’s worse than printer delays. They cannot get the Covid relief/govt funding bill uploaded to the internet. the computers keep bugging out, several sources told me. have heard about a corrupt file in education piece of the bill. all sections need to be combined into 1 file — Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) December 21, 2020
