E-mail:
Jack Balkin: jackbalkin at yahoo.com
Bruce Ackerman bruce.ackerman at yale.edu
Ian Ayres ian.ayres at yale.edu
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Mary Dudziak mary.l.dudziak at emory.edu
Joey Fishkin joey.fishkin at gmail.com
Heather Gerken heather.gerken at yale.edu
Abbe Gluck abbe.gluck at yale.edu
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Deborah Pearlstein dpearlst at yu.edu
Rick Pildes rick.pildes at nyu.edu
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Richard Primus raprimus at umich.edu
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Alice Ristroph alice.ristroph at shu.edu
Neil Siegel siegel at law.duke.edu
David Super david.super at law.georgetown.edu
Brian Tamanaha btamanaha at wulaw.wustl.edu
Nelson Tebbe nelson.tebbe at brooklaw.edu
Mark Tushnet mtushnet at law.harvard.edu
Adam Winkler winkler at ucla.edu
Someone originated the idea that the Senate's version of the food safety bill might be unconstitutional (presumably if adopted without change by the House) because it contains some revenue-raising provisions. That, it's been said, violates the Origination Clause, which provides that all bills for raising revenue must originate in the House. The case law gives an extremely narrow reading of the term "bill for raising revenue," and the Constitution also allows the Senate to "propose amendments as on other bills." (A revenue-raising provision that's incidental to a regulatory program, for example, is not a "bill for raising revenue" under precedents dating from 1887 to 1990. And, it's apparently the accepted wisdom that if a bill for raising revenue originates in the House, the Senate can amend the bill by striking everything after the "Be it hereby enacted" and substituting its own revenue-raising provisions.)
So, here's the bleg: What is it about what the Senate did that falls outside these rules? Did it insert a provision raising revenue for general governmental purposes rather than for the special purpose of the food safety statute? Was the food safety bill first adopted by the Senate with a revenue-raising provision and then amended by the House so that it had to be adopted again in Senate? (That seems implausible from the reporting about the bill.) I'm genuinely in the dark on this, don't have the time to plow through the legislation, and haven't found any news stories adequately describing the problem in terms that are useful in trying to figure out the argument against the Senate's action.