OPINION:
When the new Congress convenes, California Republican Kevin McCarthy — who most people expect to be speaker by then — wants to start things off by reading the Constitution aloud from the well of the House.
It’s a good idea. The House did it after Ohio’s John Boehner won the speakership in 2010. Predictably, the Democrats, who were now in the minority, tried to make an issue of it, asking if the GOP would delete references to slavery and African and Native Americans counting for only three-fifths of a person. Nevertheless, the GOP went ahead anyway, and without incident.
It hasn’t been done since Nancy Pelosi became speaker for the second time. We’re encouraged that Mr. McCarthy wants to reinstitute the practice. After all, members of the House swear an oath to uphold the Constitution and its principles when they take office. It doesn’t hurt to remind them a few times what those are. It might go a long way toward keeping members in line and focused on the people’s business.
To backstop that, there are a few things the majority can add to the package of proposed House rules that will put teeth back into the instructions the founders provided about how the legislative branch should operate in the original document. One of those provisions, Article 1, Section 7, states that “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.”
To us, that means that President James Madison, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and the other great minds who had input into what the Constitution says and means wanted the part of the government most directly connected to the people to be the place where legislation that raised revenue originated. Members of the House are elected directly by the people every two years, so it probably had a lot to do with reasons of accountability.
For more than 230 years, Congress has abided by the letter of the law where Article 1, Section 7 is concerned, but not by its spirit. Over the last few decades, and with an uncomfortable level of regularity, Senate leaders from both parties have brought up House-passed bills awaiting Senate action with increasing frequency that have nothing to do with raising revenue so they can amend them on the floor to transform them into revenue-raising measures, pass them, and send them back to the House for final action.
That’s how Obamacare — which included measures to raise revenue — got through Congress. The House didn’t want to go first since a majority of its members feared the political consequences of voting for something the Senate would never pass. Since the bill that eventually became the Affordable Care Act had already passed the House — even though the original bill had nothing to do with what it eventually became — the constitutional requirement for a revenue-raising bill to originate in the House was satisfied.
Efforts have been made to have the process of a bill through Congress in that manner declared unconstitutional. It should come as no surprise that the federal courts have declined to take up the issue and have deferred to the powers granted to the legislative branch to make its own rules.
There is still a way to address it and enforce it, at least a little. The incoming House majority is assembling the package of rules under which the House will operate in the upcoming Congress. One should be added that specifies that any measure that originated and passed the House but was fundamentally changed by the Senate to add language that raised revenue must be approved by a supermajority of the House after it is sent back before it can be considered to have passed and ready for the president’s signature.
Furthermore, this provision should not be subject to a point of order so that it may not be waived. Congress has a tough job ahead. It has to cut spending, even after the estimated $180 billion in cuts required by PAYGO are made. Making it harder for the Senate to infringe on the House’s constitutional prerogative to be the place where revenue increases originate helps keep tax hikes off the table and forces added cuts. It will get inflation under control, get the debt down, and get America’s books closer to balance. There’s no reason in the world not to do it.
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