From Politico today:
House Republicans plan to unveil their governing agenda this Thursday, rolling out party’s priorities just a few weeks before voters hit the polls in the best environment for Republicans since they won both chambers of Congress in 1994.
[snipped]
The specifics of the agenda have been held tightly by Republicans, but they have already committed to proposing a constitutional test for each bill considered in the House, and they will push a “read the bill” provision that makes final versions of legislation available for the public and lawmakers to read before the House votes.
What is this Constitutional test for legislation? Well, Politico gave us a little more detail last week:
One of the GOP proposals would require bills to have a specific citation of constitutional authority, on the heels of criticism that Democrats breached their constitutional limits in Congress with big-ticket bills like health care reform. If a member questioned whether the House had constitutional authority to pass a bill, that challenge would receive debate and a vote.
Which sounds great. Except when you actually read the Rules of the House of Representatives [PDF].
RULE XIII — Calendars and Committee Reports
[snipped]
3. Content of reports
[snipped]
(d) Each report of a committee on a public bill or public joint resolution shall contain the following:
(1) A statement citing the specific powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by the bill or joint resolution.
Now I don’t think this is precisely what the Republicans are proposing. I interpret their proposal to require something like an extra section on every bill with a Constitutional citation. But there is no real difference for bills that make the headlines—in other words, bills that will get full committee consideration and a report. (I don’t think that many voters are demanding that every bill that names a post office specified that it does so under Article I, Section 8, Clause 7.) In fact, let’s consider the health care bill that this is allegedly a response to. From House Report 111-299, Part 3:
XV. CONSTITUTIONAL AUTHORITY STATEMENT
Under clause 3(d)(1) of rule XIII of the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Committee must include a statement citing the specific powers granted to Congress in the Constitution to enact the law proposed by H.R. 3200. The amendments and new law made by this bill are within Congress’ authority under Article I, Section 8, Clauses 1, 3, and 18 of the Constitution.
Obviously, the Republicans don’t have to agree that the stated clauses actually give Congress the power to enact the health care bill. But that’s ultimately a matter for the courts to decide. The committee report has provided a “specific citation of constitutional authority” for the bill. The Republicans are essentially campaigning to enact something that already exists.
As for the proposal to force a debate and vote on alleged Constitutional violations, I don’t think this does anything but waste the House’s time. If a Representative thinks a bill is unconstitutional and so should not pass, they’re not going to vote for it anyway. The Senate does have a similar provision, and when it was invoked against the D.C. House Voting Rights bill in February 2009, only one Senator did not vote the same way on both the vote on the point of order and the vote on passage.
