Hello Everyone,
It seems that the stimulus package has been approved and funds will be distributed to citizens to help with individuals financial loss during this National emergency.
My question is, I’m seeing all kinds of reports that attached to this bill are funding measures completely irrelevant to the purpose of the bill. I realize this is done all the time, but why is it allowed? How can a Congress Critter be allowed to tack on something to a piece of legislation that has absolutely nothing to do with the bill itself?
Simply because Congress sets its own rules and has never decided to prohibit this.
They don’t because it is often handy (i.e. beneficial to someone’s self interest) to be able to introduce add-ons at will. Practically speaking, this can be used for both good and evil purposes.
Also practically speaking, when you get bills as sweeping as the stimulus package, I can’t imagine setting up rules ahead of time that could function as you seem to want. What in the world isn’t relevant now?
Who is going to stop a member of Congress from doing this? There’s nothing in the Constitution that says it’s not allowed. And article I gives Congress the power to make its own rules. In whose interest is it to create such a rule? And even if they make such a rule, then Congress gets to enforce it, or not, how it wishes.
Back in the 1990s, Clinton (the one that was president at the time) asked Congress to give him a line item veto to combat add-ons like the OP describes. Previous presidents had also asked for a line item veto, but Clinton was the first president to actually get one. With a line item veto, the president can veto only part of a bill, so if someone tacks something onto the end of it, the president can veto just that add-on.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your point of view), the line item veto act was later found to be unconstitutional since it did an end run around various laws and procedures.
The lesson learned is that if we want a line item veto, it’s going to require a change to the constitution to get one. Until then, we’re probably stuck with add-ons.
For what it’s worth, Clinton used the line item veto to great effect to keep the budget under control.
That is just not true. He used it a limited number of times to eliminate several hundred million dollars of spending at a time overall spending was closing in on $2 trillion. The growing economy under Clinton has much, much, much more to do with the brief budget surplus we had in the late 1990s.
Some states constitutionally require bills to be single-subject, but that is not the case for the federal Congress. As long as it is within the enumerated powers in the Constitution, *they *set the rules for how they make the sausage.
“Omnibus” bills like this one are for the purpose of doing a whole lot of different things at once rather than risk some useful or important thing getting filibustered or shot down on its own, and require only a very, very broad relationship.
As to the tacking on of amendments and riders: It’s not as if it can be done ona whim. The interested member has to first try to get the sucommittee and then the full committee with jurisdiction over the Bill to agree. Then if that doesn’t work, in the House (I do not know the US Senate that well) they can present it to the Rules Committee when they meet to decide what amendments are in order to bring before the Whole and see if anyone will go for them, and which not to even bother with. Then the Whole has to pass it or not, and the Whole of course can override any committee and open up the bill.
Obviously if the people signing off on a proposed package are Pelosi and McConnell, how that is treated is gonna be a whole damn lot different than if all you got is Gaetz and Sinema.
What the House did this morning was receive their bill as was amended in the Senate, with a report to accept as-is and pass without any further amendment. An agreement was made by the floor leaders that once everyone had their say it WOULD be passed by Voice Vote and that nobody would move for a counted, recorded vote lest he know the Wrath of Og.
By definition, any provision which is contained within a bill is related to the bill.
If we have a bill that has some sections that provide disaster relief to an area struck by a hurricane and some sections that prohibit the appearance of cartoon characters on postage stamps, then both of these subjects are part of the bill. We can’t call it a disaster relief bill with some unrelated nonsense about stamps anymore than we can call it a postal regulation bill with some unrelated nonsense about the weather.
Of course, a line item veto still has the problem that then you have to figure out just what counts as a line item. Can Congress pass a bill that says “Line 1: North Takoma shall receive $10 billion in earthquake relief funding and hunting of three-toed lemurs is not permitted”? Can the President then veto just the word “not” out of that?
Well, yes, but just who decides what is an “integral whole”? My examples were obviously extreme cases, but there are always going to be borderline ones.
Knowing zero about congressional procedure, and since it’s not official rules anyway - I presume that call would be up to the speaker, with the house having the ability to override him, and the senate speaker / majority having the same option to refuse to approve a clause as outside the scope of the bill.
IIRC from Canadian civics decades ago - the government introduces a bill. Amendments must be just that - amendments. They change something in the bill to affect the overall result of the legislation, not tack on an irrelevancy.
Canada had a few parliamentary kefuffles - extended bell-ringing where opposition held up parliamentary votes, etc. to protest “omnibus bills”. The government would wrap up several unrelated items in a single bill, and give it to the house as “take it or leave it”. Longer term, the compromise was to avoid this sort of conglomeration in one bill.
The trouble is the rules in congress as I understand are set by congress and can be changed by congress. One zealous session may not last much longer than 2 years before it reverts, because congress considers it a perk. By contrast, the “single focus” bill with no irrelevant amendments is a tradition of the British parliamentary system and less likely to be changed.
Also, more important - the parliamentary government in a majority, and the government with consideration of the opposition in a minority, pretty much dictates the legislative agenda. There’s even a system here where the house will randomly pick and “consider” a few bills written by the regular members of the house (and usually forget about them). Congress is very different from the British system, with essentially 330+100 loose cannons all trying to do their own thing and set their own agenda, so anyone can write and submit a bill and random acts of targeted pork happen spontaneously all the time.
And pork-barrel spending is inherently built into the structure of our Constitution. What everyone else calls pork, the legislator introducing the pork calls “representing the interests of his constituents”.
But when Congress debates a bill, the method of changing the bill is amendments. So, that isn’t actually instructive.
To illustrate the problem of determining what is relevant and what is not relevant, the recently-signed CARES Act coronavirus bill contains the following major sections:
$1,200 checks for Americans
Changes to unemployed benefits
Tax subsidies for certain industries
Changes to supply chains to address shortages of PPE, vaccines, and other medical items
Government payments for certain testing costs
Aid to school districts
Reform of certain sick leave policies
Medicare and Medicaid changes
Funding for agencies to respond to coronavirus
…and really much more.
So is that one bill or nine (or more)? The question of “amendments must be pertinent” is largely subjective, and is more likely used as a tool by those in power to keep policies proposed by the minority parties bottled up and never voted upon.
The intent of the bill is to deal with the effects of Covid on the economy.
It’s not hard to see that, let’s say, a “bridge to nowhere” is only peripherally useful in helping the country keep the economy afloat. Anything specific to a county or state is only relevant if it deals with an issue directly related to how the virus has affected that state different from the rest. (i.e. one state needs a special subsidy to keep ferries running, say. Or airports, or supply ships.)
But yes, it will always be a judgement call and the theory is the “independent” speaker is the first one to make a call, followed by a vote of the whole house on whether to override them.
I wonder if the founding fathers ever intended the pockets of the federal government to sweeten the pot for the constituents of the more influential members of congress? IIRC, back then there was always barely enough money to perform the basic functions of government.
But there is no independent speaker in our system of government, and a majority vote on whether an amendment is germane is probably similar - if not identical - to a majority vote on adoption.
However, it is also not that case that Congress is an open door to all unrelated amendments. The House usually considers bills under a procedure defined by a “rule,” which determines which amendments can be in order, how long they can be debated, etc. The majority party routinely excludes amendments from the minority party which are judged to be non-germane.
In the Senate, non-germane amendments are typically allowed, unless cloture has been invoked on a bill, which means a total of 30 hours of debate remaining on the bill, and a requirement that only certain types of germane amendments be in order.
Odd. Someone recognizes the next person to speak, rules on motions of privilege and points of order. If that person cannot be relied upon to be moderately impartial and follow rules, the whole system breaks down.
In most cases, including this, it’s pretty obvious what’s integral. Helping individuals and helping small businesses and/or corporations are two entirely different things. Both worthy of discussion, but are clearly separate issues. Legitimate borderline cases are extremely rare.
