Rep. Joe Barton said no thanks to the bill number that was tagged for his recently introduced legislation on crude oil exports and demanded a new one — the issued 666, he said, was too distracting.
“It quickly because clear that the original bill number carried many different negative connotations,” Sean Brown, a spokesman for Mr. Barton, said in an email to The Hill. “We decided it was best to change it so people will focus on the content of the legislation, not the bill number.”
He requested the 666 — the commonly accepted number of the Beast, the anti-Christ, Satan — be changed. His bill to repeal a decades-old ban on crude oil exports was then numbered 702, The Hill said.
Other bills in Congress do have the 666 number: H.Res. 666 in the 112th Congress expressed the sense that Medicare shouldn’t be changed for those over the age of 55, The Hill reported. And H.R. 666 from the 113th Congress reaffirmed the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to place lands into trusts for Indian tribes.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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