This story has kind of been simmering just below the surface for a few weeks, but it’s pretty interesting. It deals with a legislative typo — generally not fascinating stuff — but it also speaks to some of the major issues in politics right now, most notably Republican incompetence and willingness to cut corners.
Washington threw all that old-fashioned civics stuff into a tizzy, when President Bush signed into law a bill that actually 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.
It’s pretty basic — 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? A couple of new lawsuits say it isn’t.
The budget typo that sparked partisan barbs earlier this year is now attracting the attention of more lawyers. Two new legal actions question the constitutional validity of the $39 billion deficit-reduction bill that President Bush signed in February.
Public Citizen filed a lawsuit yesterday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia seeking to nullify the law. On Friday, 15 Tennessee hospitals involved in a decade-long dispute with Medicare filed a memorandum with the same court calling the bill unconstitutional.
Legal scholars seem to believe that the action was a fairly obvious violation of the Constitution and that lawmakers have little choice but to start over. Republicans don’t want to.
It’s par for the course with GOP officials lately. They write legislation in secret, they throw the rules out the window, and they ignore legal concerns. What’s more, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) believes the president may have known the bill he was signing wasn’t legitimate while he was signing it. This prompted Digby to note, “I’m beginning to think they are actively trying to destroy the Constitution just for the hell of it.” Given what we’ve seen, it’s a reasonable suspicion.
But it also plays into the competence meme that’s dominated political discussions of late. Republicans control the House, Senate, and White House, they agree on all of the details for a sweeping spending bill, but they can’t even get it through the legislative process without screwing it up.
Can’t anybody here play this game?