To update a post from last month, you may recall that Bush recently signed a spending bill into law despite the fact that it never actually passed the House. Pesky details.
It’s supposed to be a pretty straightforward system. The House and Senate pass the same bill, the president signs it, it’s a law. In this case, the House and Senate passed slightly different bills, including a $2 billion dollar Medicare mistake, Republicans decided it was close enough, and Bush signed it. Is it a law? The administration says it is.
There are some congressional Democrats going to court, arguing otherwise.
Eleven House Democrats said Thursday they would sue the Bush administration, alleging the $39 billion deficit-reducing legislation signed by the president is unconstitutional because the House and Senate failed to approve identical versions.
The lawsuit, led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, was to be filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Detroit…. “Once again the administration is playing fast and loose with the Constitution,” Conyers said. “Anyone who has passed the sixth grade knows that before a bill can become law, both Houses of Congress must approve it.”
In addition to Conyers, the plaintiffs include Reps. John Dingell of Michigan, George Miller of California, Charles Rangel of New York, Collin Peterson of Minnesota, Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, James Oberstar of Minnesota, Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Pete Stark of California, Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Louise Slaughter of New York.
It should make for a pretty interesting case — well, at least as interesting as a legislative typo can be — but process aside, I still think the controversy speaks to a larger problem.
Republicans in DC just don’t seem to care anymore, if they ever did. They write legislation in secret, they throw the rules out the window, and they ignore the constitutionally-mandated legal process. What’s more, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) has suggested that the president may have known the bill he was signing wasn’t legitimate while he was signing it.
The AP noted that lawsuit asks a judge to declare the act is not law and provide a temporary restraining order preventing it from being implemented. Stay tuned.