Washington Post – Mar. 24, 2006:
For anyone who took fifth-grade social studies or sang “I’m Just a Bill,” how legislation turns to law always seemed pretty simple: The House passes a bill, the Senate passes the same bill, the president signs it.
But last month, Washington threw all that old-fashioned civics stuff into a tizzy, when President Bush signed into law a bill that never passed the House. Bill – in this case, a major budget-cutting measure that will affect millions of Americans – became a law because it was “certified” by the leaders of the House and Senate.
Update: Bush may have known about the problem before he signed it!
Today Rep. Waxman sent a letter to the White House Chief of Staff asking that the White House respond to information that the Speaker of the House called President Bush to alert him that the version of the Reconciliation Act he was about to sign differed from the version that passed the U.S. House of Representatives. Rep. Waxman writes: “If the President signed the Reconciliation Act knowing its constitutional infirmity, he would in effect be placing himself above the Constitution.”
Continuing from the Washington Post article…
After stewing for weeks, Public Citizen, a legislative watchdog group, sued Tuesday to block the budget-cutting law, charging that Bush and Republican leaders of Congress flagrantly violated the Constitution when the president signed it into law knowing that the version that cleared the House was substantively different from the Senate’s version.
As the measure was being sent to the House last month, a Senate clerk inadvertently changed that 13-month-restriction to 36 months, a $2 billion alteration. With the mistaken change, the measure squeaked through the House, 216 to 214.
After the mistake was revealed, Republican leaders were loath to fight the battle again by having another vote, so White House officials simply deemed the Senate version to be the law.
The Bush administration is relying on some ancient legal mumbo-jumbo…
For their part, congressional leaders and administration officials point to an 1892 Supreme Court decision, Field v. Clark, to argue that as long as the Speaker of the House and the leader of the Senate certify a bill passed, it is passed.
However…
There’s a small problem with this analysis. In Field, the House, Senate and the President all signed the same bill. The only discrepancy was between the signed version and the version ultimately transcribed to the Congressional Record. In the present case, however, the House signed one version of a bill and the Senate and President Bush signed another.
“Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, shall, before it become a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approve he shall sign it…”
The Right ridiculed Clinton for not knowing what “is” means. But it appears that the entire Bush administration doesn’t know the difference between “and” and “or.”
Paul, if the government starts oppressing its own people then the gloves are off. If you no longer have to worry about pesky things like elections and laws you can then just blow away people with the most efficient weapon system. Are you claiming that we are blowing people away indiscriminately in Iraq?
I don’t want to get caught up in a discussion about the 2nd amendment. The point is that we cannot know what the founding fathers had in mind. We can only go by what they wrote down. The world has changed a lot in 230 years. We must take in consideration those changes when we apply the constitution otherwise it will become irrelevant. The idea that it only means what the founding fathers meant is ridiculous because we can never know exactly what they meant. We have to go by the language as written. It must be interpreted. The original intent plays a part but it cannot be the only way to interpret the constitution. If the founding fathers didn’t want us to use our intellects to make our laws, they wouldn’t have allowed us to amend the constitution. They realized that they could not anticipate everything. They knew it had to adapt and grow.
Mike,
Making comments about King George is fun and all, but since Conservatives consider George W. Bush to be infallible, would it be mor appropriate to call him Pope George?
Re 39, re 36,
You are so full of sh*t. Since you don’t have an argument you poo poo the question.
Alex,
You are shooting around the target instead of hitting black.
As you point out, the amendment process is exactly the tool the founders gave to future generation to change the function and structure of the government. But you cannot take the unamended portions of the Constitution (or any law for that matter) and change their meanings to something other than what the intentions of those who enacted them were. If our laws or Constitution need to be changed to fit the changing times, then they should be changed, not simply reinterpretted to give them a wholy different meaning.
The real problem for people who wish to enact change is that it’s much more difficult to successfully pass an amendment than it is to get a judicial reinterpretation.
Theopoopoolus, I am not going to abide by your concept of “reality.” I can’t win if I play by your rules.
Paul,
Re 29 – No – not in this article, but remarks reported by Bush on CNN on a report about this specific topic.
Mike, the problem is that when Repugs don’t like a decision they call it judicial activism. It is just a double standard whenever it is convenient the Repugs engage in their own judicial activism they just don’t call it that. Its only wrong if the Democrats do it.
Ken you need to wake up, there are maybe a handful of real conservatives in both houses of Congress. Many people in Congress like to use that term to identify themselves during election years but they have no real conservative convictions hence, why spending is 1/3 higher (subtracting war costs)under Bush than it was under Clinton. Also Alex you really need to get Markos to give you some updated talking points.
…yawn…
Paul, You are not interested in debate. When I make a point you cannot defend, you change the “rules.” That’s the level of your debating skills. When the going gets tough, turn tail and head for the hills.
Scungili, The talking points are my own, thank you. I don’t need Markos or anyone else to come up with things this administration has screwed up. For that I just need to read the news.
“For that I just need to read the news.”
God that’s friggin’ funny!
Statement in #34
and what’s happening in iraq, where all the state of the art weapons are? …
Comment by Paul Theodoropoulos — 3/28/2006 @ 11:49 am
Question in #36
…Are you claiming that we are blowing people away indiscriminately in Iraq?
Comment by Alex — 3/28/2006 @ 12:04 pm
Reply in #39
re 36, nice begging-the-question argument there, unworthy of a reasoned reply (since one can’t give one to a ‘when did you stop beating your wife’ argument). …
stop trolling.
Comment by Paul Theodoropoulos — 3/28/2006 @ 12:18 pm
Retort in #40
You are so full of sh*t. Since you don’t have an argument you poo poo the question.
Comment by Alex — 3/28/2006 @ 12:29 pm
Last word in #46
man, now that’s debating!!! (yawn)
Comment by Paul Theodoropoulos — 3/28/2006 @ 2:40 pm
Alex, are you satisfied that your question was answered? Don’t you just love debaters that call names and insult personal integrities when they have a losing argument. There are some very intelligent people that visit Dvorak that have a difficult time writing understandable English, so don’t be so hard on them because they can’t express themselves without getting flustered.
The simple solution is just send the bill back to Congress and have them fix it. So a “clerical” error was made, it happens often enough that there doesn’t need to be a Constitutional crisis about it.
> I don’t think they would have felt the same way about machine guns,
I’m not so sure. The security of a free state involves threats both foreign and domestic. This militia is intended as another check on the power of the federal government, after the first amendment check of public disclosure fails. Given a standing army, they might have wanted individuals to have the power to take down that army.
the error was one of typo by a clerk, the bill passed the house with the error, but it was corrected in the copy given to the Senate. They then passed the corrected copy…..but no one noticed(because no one reads the damn bills) until it was sent to and signed by the President.
The House did have a correction vote,(actually, I think it was passed by *resolution*) or so I read and passed the correct version.
This is actually where the problem comes in, is it then legal? Or will they have to pull it and re-vote in both houses. The Democrats(who didn’t read the damn bill either) will make hay until the cows come home and the Republicans(who also don’t read bills) will come up with excuses. But eventually, the bill will have to be redone, I’m sure.
If some bored out of his gourd clerk hadn’t compared copies, no one of any power would have noticed the difference.
The real point here is that not 1 single Senator or House member of either party saw the mistake, because NONE of them had read the bill. They rely on aides and lobbyists to tell them whats in a bill, because they may have 50 to 100 bills on their desk at any one time, and some are just plain lazy. It points up the fact that laws are passed without knowing whats actually in them and that too damn many laws are being passed by Congress.
Bush signed what he thought was a passed bill. It’s not his job to make sure Congress dots all the i’s and crosses all the t’s. And the supposed comment that it didn’t matter was not in any of the 20 or so articles I read on this issue.
And Alex….while your posts are always the same, no matter the issue, the claim that the 2nd Amendment was because we had no standing Army is wrong. It’s explained in the Federalist Papers, that the Founders wanted the *public* to have the *right* to bear arms so that no goverment could force change that was against the constitution on the citizens of this country. As Jefferson said at the time…….it’s the *right* of the citizen to occasionally rise up against the goverment and refresh the revolution. *paraphrasing* since I can’t off the top of my head remember the exact words.
AB CD
The founding fathers had this concept about not paying taxes. Everything was done as cheaply as possible. Even after Independence was gained, Britain was still the major enemy and a constant threat in Canada and the Caribbean. The Standing Army was small because of the cost. Right up until the Civil War the Regular Army was small and depended upon the militia.
President Jefferson authorized Lewis and Clark to undertake their expedition as Regular Army Captains. Yet, the Secretary of the Army would only pay Clark as a Lieutenant, to save money. He even tried to refuse to honor debts incurred by Lewis and Clark for the same reason. Almost all of the War of 1812 was fought by militias. Maybe if there had been more Regulars the war would have been less a failure. Only the Navy was all Regulars.
The argument made whenever it was made about how a militia wouldn’t stand a chance against a standing army is just silly. The first, and biggest, problem for the standing army is deserters. The standing army is composed of citizens. Asking them to kill Iraqis is one thing, asking them to kill their family is a whole different ball game. Sure, a good number of them would stay and fight based off orders. But many would leave and fight with the militia, probably bringing more weapons with them likely including jets, tanks, etc depending on what branch the deserter was in.
The second part, is a lot of the weapons would be useless fighting on your own soil. We can carpet bomb a foreign enemy, but the government would most likely wish to not destroy their nation just to quell an uprising.
The third part, is revolutionaries (thats what we would technically be if we revolted) generally get a lot of foreign aid. France specifically hates our government and would certainly be willing to help us “fix” it. I’m sure there are lots of governments that would help.
So, yes… a few thousand people with machineguns can turn into a few million with tanks pretty easily.
Bush suffers from Jesus-Christ Syndrome. He believes he is doing God’s work. Which is kind of true if you understand that man is god and Man (mankind) is God.
The right to bear arms today would mean bearing arms that are greater than nukes. YOU can stop the President of The United States. YOU can disobey his orders. Bush could sign a law today to consript me into the army tomorrow. I won’t go. I accept jail time. I STOP Bush. I am master of myself. Nobody else. I wave the True flag of Freedom, my Consciousness. I am prepared to die for it.