A question for constitutional lawyers:
Byline: bob | Category: Government | Posted at: Thursday, 2 October 2008
Is the bailout bill just passed in the Senate yesterday unconstitutional?
All bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.
As I understand it, any bill containing a change to the tax code is passed through the House and then brought to the Senate for debate. At that point the Senate can alter the bill, but it then must go to conference committee to resolve the differences between the bills and then back in identical form to both houses for a final vote. That’s not how this bill came to the Senate. Is it invalid even if now the House concurs?
October 2nd, 2008 at 6:27 am
Having a flashback to a college class 40+ years ago. The prof made that point, but what happens is that the Senate takes a bill from the House, doesn’t matter what, rips out everything as an amendment, and goes on about their business.
October 2nd, 2008 at 8:26 am
The argument is going to be that this bill is not about raising revenue, even though anyone with shred #1 of common sense knows that it is about raising revenue.
October 2nd, 2008 at 10:44 am
[…] am remiss in mentioning that Bob Krumm has returned home and is blogging again. He asks an important question: Is the bailout bill just passed in the Senate yesterday […]
October 2nd, 2008 at 11:42 am
[…] in the House of Representatives rather than the Senate. I almost forgot that until I read Bob Krumm’s post regarding the Senate Bailout “Pork Happy, Waste the Taxpayers Money on Useless Junk” […]
October 2nd, 2008 at 12:14 pm
They are getting off on a technicality here. The Senate version was an amendment to HR1424 – strangely the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 and the Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (I can’t make this up). What the Senate voted on was an amendment replacing the entire text of the original HR1424, which had already passed as a separate resolution in April.
HR1424 was a dead bill, so to circumvent the origination clause (Art. 1, Sec. 7), Sens. Reid and McConnell made the vote an amendment to substitute language.
Similarly, the ORIGINAL bailout bill in the House was offered as amendment to a bill brought by Rep. Rangle to extend the combat zone income tax exemption.