The passing of the bailout bill was unconstitutional in principle

I know there is already a topic about the constitutional validity of the bailout bill, but they all address the issue of Article 1, Section 7. I’m going for a different angle on this one, so bear with me. However before I move onto my main argument I do want to revisit that section briefly.

Just for the record, here is the article in question

U.S. Constitution, Art. 1, Sec. 7: All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills.

A further explanation of the reasoning behind this bill can be found here on wiki answers.

Article I, Section 7 states that all revenue bills shall originate in the House of Representatives but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on any other bills. The reason for this is that at the time the Constitution was written, it was felt that Senators would be more wealthy than Representatives and might be willing to spend more government money than the Representatives would. Also, the House with its greater numbers was seen as being the better gauge of the wishes of the people for spending measures.

Now as we all know, this law was side-stepped by taking an old bill (H.R. 1424. the 'Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008) and completely rewriting it to include the financial bailout package, therefore eliminating the need for it to pass through Congress first

Clearly, this was not what the founding fathers had in mind when writing Article 1, Section 7 of the constitution. In fact, the provisions in the above constitutional clause are clearly there to stop exactly this sort of thing from happening. Going back to the wiki answer briefly:

the House with its greater numbers was seen as being the better gauge of the wishes of the people for spending measures

Well, we clearly saw that was the case when the bill was initially rejected. Representatives received scores of phone calls from their constituents that were by all accounts, in complete opposition to the proposal on the table. And some might say as a direct result of that, the bill was rejected.

Surely that in itself made a perfect case for why Article 1, Section 7 of the constitution was written into law. The founding fathers once again showing great insight into the future predicaments the legislative branch might find themselves in.

In regards to the tabling of the bill, Rep. Ron Paul stated

"That in itself was unconstitutional but it's been done before and it will be done again,"

But getting back on topic here, it is clear from the standpoint of Article 1, Section 7 of the constitution, the bill was indeed legal, as by rewriting a pre-existing bill, the Senate completely circumvented the need to originate the bill from Congress.

However, in my opinion, the bill was still illegal.

Senate’s interpretation of the bill completely goes against the obvious intention of the words and meaning of the constitution. Isn't that a crime in itself?

James Madison, the ‘father’ of the constitution, who was extremely vocal on the subject of constitutional interpretation, clearly thought so. He believed the constitution was not a living document, and any ‘evolution’ of the constitution would lead to tyranny.

With that in mind how can this bill be allowed to stand. The constitution is black and white, it can not evolve. This leads to the stripping of the freedoms the constitution was put in place to protect.

What are your thoughts on this issue?

I would love to hear from anyone with experience or knowledge of legal precedent when it comes to the interpretation of an article in the US Constitution.


Edit: Title change to reflect contents of post

[edit on 14/10/08 by liketoknow]

I wanted to act an interesting side-note, and possibly a new avenue to pursue.


One of the attachments to the bill was the Mental Health Parity act, which;

"amends the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Public Health Service Act, and the Internal Revenue Code to require a group health plan provide both medical and surgical benefits and mental health or substance use disorder benefits."

Does the constitution allow congress to define the products of a private sector company?

I haven’t yet gone through the bill page by page, but it would be interesting to find out how many other attachments are unconstitutional in their essence.

The only role the government was ever suppose to have in the lives of the people of the USA was to be a protector of the rights of its citizens. The economic welfare was never meant to be a concern of the government. The idea of ever increasing search of wealth and power by politicians and businessmen have corrupted the fundamental ideals of what the Constitution was suppose to protect. Our rights, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In my opinion they wrongly gave our money away to businessmen who only seek to serve themselves, we revolted against England for almost the same reason, yet we have been constantly going along with this unlawful abuse of our tax dollars. The majority of Americans said "NO,"they said it loud and clear, yet the Representatives and Senators still voted yes.


We are not being represented by the people we trusted with such a honored duty and what can be more treasonous than that?


*edit
We revolted against England because of "taxation without representation." I used that because we the taxpayers will be force to pay taxes for the bailouts Congress has and will pass against the wishes of the majority of the peoples wishes. Similar, but not quite the same.

[edit on 14-10-2008 by emptee]

Originally posted by emptee
The economic welfare was never meant to be a concern of the government. The idea of ever increasing search of wealth and power by politicians and businessmen have corrupted the fundamental ideals of what the Constitution was suppose to protect.
[edit on 14-10-2008 by emptee]

Exactly, so surely the act of deliberately misinterpreting the constitution for the purposes of violating its principles, is in itself a violation of the very laws that protect it?

Ok, so I'm shamelessly bumping my own thread here, but with recent announcements from the fed clearing the way for further taxpayer bailouts, I think this is a very relevant question, and I would love hear peoples thoughts on the issue.