On September 17, 2009, Congressman Charlie Rangel introduced a bill in the House, H.R. 3590, the Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009, whose purpose was to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees. The bill passed the House on October 8 by a 416-0 vote. On November 19, Harry Reid introduced his own version of H.R. 3590 in the Senate. He took the bill that had been unanimously passed by the House, renamed it the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, deleted all its contents after the first sentence, and replaced it with totally different content. What followed was the first pass of the Senate version of ObamaCare. In his majority opinion, Justice Roberts failed to even mention the bill’s legislative history. He ignored the Origination Clause problem presented by Senate Majority Leader Reids “shell bill” and its constitutional circumvention. Presumably, he relied upon the “enrolled bill rule” established in the Court’s 1892 Marshall Fields Co. v. Clark decision as an excuse to overlook Senator Reid’s fraudulent trickery. Under the “enrolled bill rule,” the Court essentially says if Congress tells it a bill originated in a specific House, it simply accepts that statement of enrollment as the “proper origination of the bill.”
Posted on: Tue, 15 Oct 2013 19:45:21 +0000
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