Revenue Bills Must Begin in the House of Representatives
Common Interpretation
Article I, Department 7
Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution creates certain rules to govern how Congress makes law. Its kickoff Clause—known as the Origination Clause—requires all bills for raising revenue to originate in the House of Representatives. The second—the Presentment Clause—requires all laws to exist presented to the President for his signature or veto. And the third Clause—the Presentment of Resolutions Clause—prevents Congress from sidestepping the Presentment Clause. Taken together, these rules channel lawmaking through a process that promotes thorough deliberation over the wisdom of whatever new legislation.
The Origination Clause derived from an English parliamentary exercise requiring all money bills to have their showtime reading in the Business firm of Commons. The Framers borrowed this practice, hoping that it would confer the "power of the purse" on the legislative body virtually responsive to the people—the House of Representatives. As such, only the House may innovate bills "for raising acquirement," although the Senate is explicitly empowered to amend Firm-originated bills. Any other type of nib may originate in either the Senate or the House.
The Origination Clause was role of the Great Compromise. A concession to the larger states, which were dissatisfied with the smaller states' disproportionate power in the Senate, it limits the ability to introduce taxation and tariff bills exclusively to the Business firm of Representatives, where the larger states enjoyed greater representation. But while the Clause was hotly contested during the Ramble Convention and the ratification debates, the Senate'due south power to meliorate revenue-raising bills has deprived the Clause of much practical significance.
The Presentment Clause is no such newspaper tiger. The Clause provides that a beak can go a law only if, later passage past both Houses of Congress, it is presented to the President. The President then has x days either to sign the pecker into police or refuse the bill and return it to Congress with an caption of his or her objections.
If the President rejects the bill, he or she must return it to the Firm in which it originated. This process is known as a "veto," though the word does non actually appear in the text of the Constitution. Congress may and then modify the pecker, responding to the President'southward stated objections, to increment the likelihood of presidential blessing. Alternatively, Congress may override the President's veto if both Houses can pass the bill past at least a ii-thirds vote. The bill then becomes law without further "presentment" to the President.
Matters are more complicated if the President does zilch past the end of the ten-twenty-four hours window. If Congress is in session, the bill becomes a law—a miracle known as "default enactment." If Congress is out of session, yet, the President has no place to return a bill that he or she wishes to veto. In those circumstances, the President may effectively veto the bill by taking no action. This process, showtime used past James Madison during an intersession recess in 1812, is known every bit a "pocket veto." Congress may not override a pocket veto.
What exactly constitutes an banishment for the purposes of a pocket veto has been a source of conflict. Does any adjournment count, for example, or just those adjournments that end the legislative session? The Supreme Court provided some insight in the Pocket Veto Example (1929), holding that "the formative question" is whether Congress has adjourned in a way "that 'prevents' the President from returning the pecker to the House in which information technology originated within the time allowed." Because both Houses had adjourned in the Pocket Veto Example, even though the legislation session was not over, a pocket veto was permissible.
The Court refined that estimation in Wright v. U.s. (1938), ruling that a three-mean solar day adjournment of just one House of Congress does not permit a pocket veto. For brief adjournments of a unmarried House, the Courtroom ruled, the originating House may designate an agent, such equally a Secretary or Clerk, to receive a vetoed neb. Modern do is more fluid than Wright may suggest, however. Several recent Presidents accept purported to pocket veto bills even when the originating House of Congress has designated an agent to receive a veto bulletin.
The 3rd and final Clause, known as the Presentment of Resolutions Clause, concerns the presentment of orders, resolutions, and any issues other than bills. The Presentment of Resolutions Clause was appended at the behest of James Madison, who foresaw the possibility that Congress might circumvent the presentment process past fashioning a nib as a "resolution" or "order." To avoid that circumvention, the Clause says that whatever issue requiring the concurrence of the House and the Senate—whatever that effect happens to be chosen—must be presented to the President. A congressional declaration of war, for example, comes in the grade of a articulation resolution. Although information technology is not denominated a "beak," it must be submitted for presidential approval.
Not all issues require presentment, nevertheless. The Clause explicitly exempts questions of adjournment and, under Commodity V, congressionally proposed amendments to the Constitution are sent to country legislatures for approval, not to the President. More more often than not, resolutions that are not meant to become police are not field of study to presentment. Congress may, for instance, prefer concurrent resolutions setting budgetary goals without seeking presidential approval. The same holds for resolutions that apply simply to the operation of a detail House, such as imposing censure on a House member or expressing "the mood" of the House. By the same token, legislative subpoenas are non presented to the president for his blessing.
The Supreme Court reinforced the Presentment of Resolutions Clause (and vindicated Madison's prediction) most famously in I.N.Southward. 5. Chadha (1983), ruling that information technology was unconstitutional for Congress to utilize a resolution to overturn an executive activeness. The Courtroom reasoned that such a "legislative veto" circumvents the presentment process and infringes on the President'south power to execute the laws.
Matters of Debate
Judicial Enforcement of Commodity I, Section vii
Some of the most urgent debates in constitutional police force arise when courts are asked to enforce those parts of the Constitution—including Article I, Section 7—that construction how Congress makes police.
Although the betoken is oft overlooked, most of the constitutional rules governing code need no judicial enforcement. The House of Representatives, for example, does not endeavor to claim the power to make a law without Senate involvement. Nor do the House and Senate believe that their bills have the strength of law even if the President has vetoed them. The rules of bicameralism and presentment are so entrenched in our constitutional system that it would exist unthinkable to disregard them.
From time to fourth dimension, however, complex questions do arise about whether Congress and the President take been faithful to the lawmaking process that Article I, Section 7 prescribes. When that happens, the courts may be enlisted to uphold the constitutional blueprint. Courts must so confront a hard question: how stringently should they apply the open-ended terms of the Constitution?
Take, for example, recent litigation over the Affordable Intendance Human activity (ACA), which reformed the nation'south health-care organisation. Technically, the ACA adhered to the Origination Clause, which says that "[a]ll Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the Business firm of Representatives." The bill that became the ACA was first introduced and passed in the House as the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009."
That Firm-originated bill, however, had nothing whatsoever to practise with health care. The nib became the ACA only when the Senate struck the linguistic communication of the original beak and replaced it with the text of the health-care reform law. Aught of the original bill remained.
Another Perspective
This essay is part of a discussion well-nigh Article I, Section 7 with Thomas A. Smith, Professor of Constabulary, Academy of San Diego School of Constabulary. Read the full discussion hither.
Afterward the ACA's adoption, lawsuits were filed arguing that this "vanquish pecker" procedure violated the Origination Clause. The challengers had a bespeak. The Origination Clause is supposed to requite the House of Representatives the first say in whether and when to do the power to tax. Although the Senate tin "propose and concord with Amendments equally on other bills," allowing the Senate to completely replace a House-originated pecker would effectively strip the Business firm of its gatekeeping role. The challengers therefore asked the courts to invalidate the ACA in its entirety.
Wisely, however, the courts have unanimously turned bated the constitutional challenge. The trounce beak procedure was not born with the ACA; information technology is, in fact, a procedure that the Senate has used for 200 years. And the courts have never felt it necessary to examine whether Senate amendments are "germane" to a House-originated bill. In the 1911 case of Flint v. Rock Tracy Company, for instance, the Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of a Senate amendment that substituted a corporate revenue enhancement for a Business firm-originated inheritance tax.
In effect, the courts have deferred to Congress'due south longstanding do, fifty-fifty though the practice left the Origination Clause with niggling piece of work to do. Nonetheless the Commonwealth has not fallen. Over time, the word betwixt the Firm and the Senate has generated a stable equilibrium that has met with general approving. The courts are rightly reluctant to upset that hard-won equilibrium.
Indeed, the courts' refusal to breathe new life into the Origination Clause may reverberate a tacit recognition that the Clause has outlived its original purpose. Prior to the adoption of the Seventeenth Amendment, state legislatures selected the Senators that would stand for united states of america in Congress. Today, both Houses can credibly merits to speak directly for the people, reducing the demand for the House to retain whatsoever special command over bills to enhance revenue.
A move is itinerant, notwithstanding, to employ constitutional litigation as a sword to disengage what Congress has created. Couched in the rhetoric of restoring the Constitution'due south "original meaning," the move's goal is to prune Congress's wings and undo its handiwork. The lawsuits confronting the ACA exemplify that movement.
But the Constitution'south meaning was non stock-still in stone at the moment of its ratification. The Constitution has instead accrued meaning from history, practice, and an evolving sense of its broader purposes. The Origination Clause may exercise piffling work in the modern era, but that's OK. Times alter; so too does the fashion we read the Constitution.
To exist sure, on rare occasions, judicial intervention to enforce Article I, Section seven may well be necessary. In INS five. Chadha (1983), for case, the Supreme Court was rightly troubled at how a i-house veto over executive-branch action might enable Congress to retain control over the execution of the laws.
But that kind of intervention should be the exception, non the norm. Otherwise, judicial superintendence of the mechanism of lawmaking risks disappointment the will of the people without adequate justification. When it comes to the Origination Clause, the courts have then far resisted the blandishments of those who seek to invalidate Congress's handiwork in the name of restoring the Constitution's original meaning. They should continue to do and so.
Matters of Debate
The Future of Article I, Department 7
1 of the most interesting recent developments in our agreement of Article I, Section 7 concerns its tertiary Clause, known every bit the Presentment of Resolutions Clause, or the Club, Resolution, and Vote (ORV) Clause. Subject area to a major revelation in the early on 20-offset century, its story illustrates originalist legal scholarship in action. (Originalism is an approach to the Constitution that seeks to interpret it according to its original public meaning.) Though the ORV Clause was widely understood for more than 200 years to be a failsafe against Congress disguising a bill as a "resolution" and thus circumventing the Presidential presentment requirement, Seth Barrett Tillman's work revealed that the Framers' intent was quite likely otherwise.
The popular interpretation of the ORV Clause comes from James Madison'southward account of the 1787 Constitutional Convention. Madison proposed that Clause 2, the Presentment Clause, be amended to include the phrase "or resolve" after "neb," achieving the same effect every bit that popularly attributed to the ORV Clause. Though Madison'southward proposal was rejected, Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph successfully proposed the ORV Clause the following day. According to Madison, the ORV Clause was merely a "new form" of his failed amendment. As practically the simply surviving commentary, Madison's oddly simplistic business relationship of the ORV Clause was accepted uncritically by the Supreme Court and legal scholars.
What Tillman uncovered was that Madison's estimation of the ORV Clause is actually inconsistent with the constitutional text. Tillman's 2005 enquiry suggests that the ORV Clause is non simply an anti-circumvention device, but as well subjects to presentment certain legislative actions not addressed in the Presentment Clause. These actions include a range of single-Firm actions authorized past prior, bicameral legislation. That Congress may legislatively authorize a unmarried Firm to human activity alone contradicts more than two centuries of legal scholarship and Supreme Court decisions—most notably, INS v. Chadha (1983). In Chadha, the Court struck downwards the "legislative veto" by the Firm of Representatives for failing to comply with the principle of bicameralism.
Tillman'due south findings as well neatly resolved an otherwise puzzling Supreme Court decision from 1798. In Hollingsworth v. Virginia, the Court ruled in a cursory stance that Congress need not have presented the Eleventh Subpoena to President Washington for his approval. Subsequent decisions have interpreted the holding to mean simply that ramble subpoena resolutions are exempt from the presentment requirement. Under Tillman'south interpretation, however, the Hollingsworth mystery is solved: the ORV Clause requires that an guild, resolution, or vote must be presented to the President simply if it is authorized by a prior statute ("to which the Concurrence of the Senate and House or Representatives may exist necessary . . . "). Considering Congress does not rely on any statutory authorization when it passes constitutional amendments, the ORV Clause does not utilise, and Congress thus need not present ramble amendment resolutions to the President.
Though his interpretation of the ORV Clause revealed a long-neglected domain of legislation in which Congress may delegate potency to single Houses or even single congressional committees, Tillman failed to define the limits of these delegations. In a published response, Professor Gary Lawson attempted to do just that. Though Lawson generally agreed with Tillman's interpretation of the ORV Clause, he found that there probable exists only one category of legislative action to which the ORV Clause could apply: the issuance of legislative subpoenas.
Some other Perspective
This essay is function of a discussion near Article I, Department vii with Nicholas Bagley, Professor of Police force, The University of Michigan Law School. Read the full discussion here.
According to Lawson'south reading of the Constitution, Congress may not delegate legislative authority simply to anyone—not to the President, nor the federal courts, nor even itself. The ORV Clause thus cannot require presentment for whatsoever deportment made by a unmarried Firm or commission pursuant to delegated legislative authority, because such delegation is constitutionally impermissible. Further, every bit Lawson interprets the Presentment Clause, the only type of legislation that tin can get a constabulary is a pecker. The ORV Clause, even so, alludes to an order, resolution, or vote that "shall take Upshot" upon blessing of the President or passage by two-thirds of the Senate and the House. If but a bill may become a law, Lawson asks, then how else may an order, resolution, or vote "take Effect"? His answer is that Congress, nether the authority of the Necessary and Proper Clause, may enact legislation authorizing each Firm to issue subpoenas.
While the Constitution grants neither Firm of Congress the ability to issue subpoenas, a police force authorizing the issuance of subpoenas past private Houses could be valid under the Necessary and Proper Clause, which allows Congress "to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution" powers elsewhere granted to the respective Houses. As Lawson allows, the ability to upshot subpoenas may be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the impeachment powers the Constitution grants to each of the Houses. Though it could non become a law, a legislative subpoena would "take Effect" by compelling testimony in an impeachment hearing. In practice, then, the ORV Clause would crave that before whatever single House issues a subpoena on the authorization of a prior statutory say-so, the subpoena be presented to the President for his approval or veto, simply as was the prior legislation that authorized the single-Business firm amendment.
The Tillman-Lawson assay may strike i as excessively technical, but in this equally in many other parts of our Constitution, the devil is in the details. The Supreme Court might revisit Chadha, and when it does, these scholars' arguments may suddenly take on the relevance of living, and contested, law.
Further Reading:
Seth Barrett Tillman, A Textualist Defense force of Article I, Department vii, Clause three: Why Hollingsworth v. Virginia Was Rightly Decided, and Why INS v. Chadha Was Wrongly Reasoned, 83 Texas L. Rev. 1265 (2005).
Gary Lawson, Burning Downward the Business firm (and Senate): A Presentment Requirement for Legislative Subpoenas Nether the Orders, Resolutions, and Votes Clause, 83 Tex. L. Rev. 1373 (2005).
Source: https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/article-i/clauses/766
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