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Tillman on the Origination Clause

Seth Barrett Tillman sends the following comments on the Origination Clause:

The Constitution provides:

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.

U.S. Const. Art. 1, Sect. 7, Cl. 1.

If the House sends a non-revenue bill to the Senate and the Senate amends the bill, and in the process makes the bill a revenue bill, the bill has become a revenue bill per Senate amendment. But that bill for raising revenue still originated in the House (albeit, it first took its character as a revenue bill via Senate amendment).

The Constitution’s text does not demand that bills for raising revenue originate in the House qua as revenue bills, but only that any bill which has the character of a revenue bill prior to final passage must have originated in the House.

It follows that there is no limit at all in regard to the Senate’s amendment power.

Indeed, the Origination Clause states that the Senate’s power (under Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 to amend revenue bills) is coextensive (“as on other Bills”) with the Senate’s power to amend non-revenue bills (under Article I, Section 7, Clause 2). Unless you are willing to argue that the Senate’s power to amend non-revenue bills per Clause 2 is textually limited, then its follows no such limitation exists under Clause 1. Any other view essentially renders Clause 1’s “as on other Bills” language nugatory. And that cannot be right (at least if you are a textualist).

Also, I think there are good prudential reasons (akin to standing and justiciability) for courts to reject Origination Clause challenges: in other words, strong versions of the enrolled bill rule and a wide interpretation of the Speech & Debate Clause are called for here. Why? In the 18th century, parliamentary journals were quite skeletal. They did not generally include either the full text of bills or the full text of amendments (unless very short). In order to make an Origination Clause challenge, the proponent would have either: (1) to reference modern congressional journals or other congressional documents to establish that the amendment process in the Senate went “too far” in some sense; or (2) to subpoena members of Congress or parliamentary staff (the Clerk, the Secretary, the sergeants-at-arms, the door-keeper, and other staff). That’s a truly bad result.

Why? If you go down path (1), you are punishing the majority for being transparent. Then they will stop being transparent. As to (2), congress members are generally exempt from process. Article I, Section 6, Clause 1. (Perhaps, you could get former members?) As to parliamentary staff – they are exempt (as a constitutional matter) from the Constitution’s Article VI oath. I suggest that the reason for that exemption was to avoid this precise situation – to keep an aggressive judiciary from invading and investigating Congress’ internal procedures. Viz: The enrolled bill rule.

The better interpretation of the Origination Clause is that only House members (i.e., the majority) can make use of the clause during inter-house proceedings. And like other rights, it can be waived, but only by those entitled to assert it.

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Heritage Foundation Panel on Recess Appointments

This Thursday, October 10, at noon, the Heritage Foundation will be hosting an event on recess appointments and the case currently pending in the Supreme Court. Senator Mike Lee will deliver opening remarks, followed by a panel discussion by Professor John Yoo and me. Here is the synopsis of the event:

Recess is over, but the President has been playing around with the Recess Appointments Clause. Earlier this year, President Obama’s alleged recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau came under fire. The problem? The Senate was not in recess at the time of the appointments. Three federal appellate courts have struck down various recess appointments as unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning this term.

In light of these controversial appointments, we are left with many questions. What is the role of the Senate when it comes to recess appointments? How did our Founding Fathers intend for the recess appointment power to be used? Can the Senate block the President from making recess appointments through the use of pro forma sessions? How might the justices rule in the Noel Canning case? Please join us as our panel of experts explores these issues.

The link for registering for this free event is here.

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Judge Jackson’s “Fast” and Furious Decision

Though it might seem like a distant memory (what with everything else going on), the House’s civil contempt lawsuit against Attorney General Eric Holder still percolates in the courts. The House is investigating “Fast and Furious,” but the resulting litigation is more like “Slow and Cranky.”

On September 30, Judge Amy Berman Jackson issued a long-awaited ruling on the Attorney General’s motion to dismiss the complaint on jurisdictional grounds. Her opinion does not reach the merits of the case (which involves the question of whether the President validly invoked executive privilege over certain internal Justice Department documents subpoenaed by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform), but it decisively rejects the Attorney General’s argument that the court lacks the power to decide the case at all.

I will summarize the court’s ruling in another post, but the bottom line is this. The Obama Justice Department made almost exactly the same jurisdictional arguments that the Bush Justice Department made in House Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers, 558 F.Supp.2d 53 (D.D.C. 2008), and they left Judge Jackson every bit as unimpressed as Judge Bates was in Miers.

One interesting point to note in Judge Jackson’s ruling. She emphasizes that the House’s complaint “raises a narrow legal question: can the executive properly assert executive privilege to shield an agency’s deliberative processes when the records in dispute do not reveal advice provided to the President himself or address his core constitutional functions?” (slip op. at 27 n.7). She contrasts this “purely legal question” with the messier function of weighing COGR’s need for the documents it seeks against DOJ’s interest in protecting its internal deliberations. Slip op. at 40-41.

But the Fast and Furious lawsuit is limited to a “purely legal question” only if Judge Jackson decides that question in favor of the House. If she concludes that the President may invoke executive privilege with regard to the documents in question, then it would be necessary for the court to engage in the kind of weighing of interests that raise some of the hallmarks of a political question.

This in turn suggests that Jackson may be leaning toward deciding the merits of the legal question in the House’s favor, which would end the litigation and require DOJ to produce the documents. Alternatively, should she decide that the President did properly invoke executive privilege, she may be inclined to send the parties back to the negotiating table before trying to “wad[e] into the murk” of the political wrangling between the parties.

 

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CAO Fact Sheet on Congressional Health Insurance

The House Chief Administrative Officer has issued this fact sheet regarding federal health insurance available to Members of Congress and those lucky staffers found to be employed in a Member’s “official office.” Following OPM’s guidance, the CAO states:

Members of Congress and congressional administrative staff are best equipped to make the determination as to whether an individual is employed by the “official office” of that member. Designations must be made prior to November 2013 for the coverage year starting January 1, 2014 and October for subsequent plan years.

Needless to say, this statement provides no additional clarity (which is to say no clarity at all) on the question of whether committee and leadership office staff may be designated as employed by the “official office” of a Member.

A couple of other questions occur to me. What happens if a Member fails to make any designation by November? Is the default rule that any staffer not affirmatively designated by a Member by that date automatically remains on the Federal Employee Health Benefit plan?

Also, is there a mechanism by which a staffer can affirmatively challenge a designation by a Member that he or she works in his “official office”? What happens in the case of shared employees who work for more than one Member? Of in the case of a committee staffer who contends that he works for the full committee chair, rather than the subcommittee chair, or vice versa? Or the ranking member rather than the chair?

Eventually the CAO (or someone) is going to have to address these questions.

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OPM’s Final Rule Pretty Much as Expected

OPM’s final rule on congressional health care says the following regarding the determination of who is “congressional staff” required to go on the Exchanges:

OPM received several comments related to health care coverage for congressional staff and how staff will be designated for the purpose of determining which individuals are required to purchase their health insurance coverage from an Exchange.

 OPM has not amended the final rule on the basis of these comments. OPM continues to believe that individual Members or their designees are in the best position to determine which staff work in the official office of each Member.  Accordingly, OPM will leave those determinations to the Members or their designees, and will not interfere in the process by which a Member of Congress may work with the House and Senate Administrative Offices to determine which of their staff are eligible for a Government contribution towards a health benefits plan purchased through an appropriate Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) as determined by the Director.  Nothing in this regulation limits a Member’s authority to delegate to the House or Senate Administrative Offices the Member’s decision about the proper designation of his or her staff. The final rule has been amended to provide an extension for staff designations affecting plan year 2014 only. Designations for individuals hired throughout the plan year should be made at the time of hire.

Again, reading between the lines, one can infer that “the official office of each Member” refers to the Member’s personal office, but OPM studiously avoids saying this directly. Thus, if a Member chooses to designate committee or leadership office employees as “congressional staff,” it sounds like OPM “will not interfere.”

Though it is hard to tell for sure.

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What the Bleep is an “Official Office”?

Much outrage ensued last month when the Office of Personnel Management issued a proposed regulation that allows the federal government to defray the cost of congressional health care purchased on the Exchanges pursuant to the Affordable Care Act. Less notice was taken of OPM’s more dubious decision, or rather non-decision, on the question of who is required to purchase insurance on the Exchanges in the first place.

Legislative Background

Some background is required. During the heath care debate, Senators Coburn and Grassley “argued that if Democrats were so keen on creating new health care programs, the president, administration officials, members of Congress and their staff should also be required to participate.” They offered amendments to that effect. Eventually the sausage machine spit out a provision that embodies their concept, but only applies to Congress, not to the executive branch. Go figure.

Specifically, as enacted into law, Subsection 1312(d)(3)(D) of the ACA provides that “Members of Congress and congressional staff” are only eligible to receive health insurance “offered through an Exchange under this Act.” When this provision becomes effective, therefore, Members and anyone who qualifies as “congressional staff” will no longer be able to participate in the general health insurance program for federal employees (the FEHB).

The question then is who qualifies as “congressional staff.” As far as I know, “congressional staff” is not a term of art defined in the law, but the ordinary meaning of the term would generally cover legislative and administrative employees of the House and Senate, with the possible exception of those who solely provide support services like installing the furniture, running the restaurants, etc. See Cong. Rec. 655 (Jan. 5, 1995) (“[O]ur legislative and our administrative personnel [are what] many people think of when you think of Capitol Hill staffers.”) (Sen. Glenn).

The ACA, however, contains a unique and rather unhelpful definition of “congressional staff.”  It defines the term as meaning “all full-time and part-time employees employed by the official office of a Member of Congress, whether in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.”

Note the apparent lack of content in this definition. It hardly seems necessary to explain that “all full-time or part-time employees” are covered or that they may work “in Washington, DC or outside of Washington, DC.” Or they may be short or tall, fat or thin, I’m guessing.

The only real point of the definition seems to be to limit “congressional staff” to those “employed by the official office of a Member of Congress.” But what is an “official office”? Do Members have “unofficial offices”? No one seems to know what an “official office of a Member of Congress” is, and, as the Congressional Research Service has observed, this phrase has not previously been used in statute or appropriations law.

If clarity had been desired, there are many existing statutory definitions that could have been used. For example, if the intent had been to limit “congressional staff” to those employed in a Member’s personal office, it would have been easy enough to say this plainly. See 2 U.S.C. § 1301 (9)(a) (defining “employing office” for purposes of the Congressional Accountability Act as including “the personal office of a Member of the House of Representatives or of a Senator.”). Of course, a cynic might conclude that obscure language was deliberately used so as to maintain plausible deniability in case someone read the provision before it was passed.

During the legislative process, Coburn and Grassley apparently objected to the definition of “congressional staff” as too narrow, contending that it would exclude “higher-paid committee aides and leadership aides.” They wanted to use Grassley’s original definition, which had covered all employees paid through the House and Senate disbursing offices. That would not only have been broader, but more intelligible and consistent with existing statutory usages. See, e.g., 2 U.S.C. §§ 89a, 130b, 130c and 130d (defining House and Senate employees as those who receive pay from the relevant disbursing authorities).

But Coburn and Grassley lost (they blame the Senate leadership), and the definition is what it is. So those required to implement the law have to figure out what constitutes a Member’s “official office.”  Continue reading “What the Bleep is an “Official Office”?”

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Legal Ethics in Representing Witnesses Before Congress

According to this Legal Times piece, Dickstein Shapiro has a problem with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Does it also have a legal ethics problem? The Legal Times relates:

Before beginning to question the five witnesses, committee chair Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) paused to criticize a Dickstein employee’s activities prior to the hearing. The employee—who was not identified, except as a female member of the firm’s lobbying group—“made multiple contacts to committee members and specifically asked them not to ask you questions,” Issa said.

Issa produced a copy of what he termed “a disturbing” email, with the sender’s name blacked out. It read: “If possible, please do not direct questions to Jonathan Silver…He’s a client of my firm. :)”

Issa said, “From the committee’s standpoint, the question is whether to refer this to the bar association, whether it’s an interference with Congress, which I find it to be.”

Rule 3.9 of the D.C. Bar Rules of Professional Conduct provides that “a lawyer representing a client before a legislative or administrative body in a nonadjudicative proceeding shall disclose that the appearance is in a representative capacity and shall conform to the provisions of Rules 3.3, 3.4(a) through (c), and 3.5.” The comments state that “[a] lawyer appearing before such a body should deal with it honestly and in conformity with applicable rules of procedure,” and “legislatures and administrative agencies have a right to expect lawyers to deal with them as they deal with courts.”

Rule 3.5(a) provides that a lawyer shall not “seek to influence a judge, juror, prospective juror, or other official by means prohibited by law.”

Rule 3.5(b) prohibits ex parte communications “during the proceeding unless authorized to do so by law or court order.”

Finally, Rule 3.5(d) prohibits a lawyer from “engag[ing] in conduct intended to disrupt any proceeding of a tribunal, including a deposition.”

Exactly how these provisions apply in the context of a congressional proceeding is a question that Bar Counsel has probably never faced before. In fact, my impression (confirmed by Jack Marshall at a recent seminar) is that even most legal ethics experts have never heard of Rule 3.9. But if the Dickstein employee is a member of the D.C. bar, or is supervised by a member of the D.C. bar responsible for her conduct, there would seem to be some serious ethics questions raised.

 

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Article V and the Single Amendment Convention

Can an Article V convention for proposing amendments be limited to considering a single amendment specified by the state legislatures in their applications? Even within the relatively sparse literature on the Article V convention, little attention has been paid to this question. Professor Rob Natelson, who has written extensively in support of the proposition that a convention may be limited to a particular subject, has expressed skepticism regarding the viability of a “single amendment convention.” Natelson’s view, however, is less a firm conclusion about the original meaning of Article V than a prediction regarding the practical difficulties likely to attend an effort to hold a single amendment convention, including the possibility that Congress or the courts would refuse to recognize it.

Recently a prominent originalist scholar, Professor Michael Rappaport (well known to the readers of this blog), has concluded that Article V permits a convention for proposing amendments to be limited by either subject or the wording of a particular amendment. See Michael B. Rappaport, The Constitutionality of a Limited Convention: An Originalist Analysis, 81 Const. Comm. 53, 56 (2012) (“The Constitution allows the state legislatures to apply not merely for a convention limited to a specific subject matter [but allows them] to draft a specially worded amendment and then to apply for a convention limited to deciding only whether to propose that amendment.”).

Although the issue is not free from doubt, I agree with Rappaport that the state legislatures have the power to limit an Article V convention to a single amendment. This is so for five reasons: Continue reading “Article V and the Single Amendment Convention”

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Speech or Debate in Congressional Employment Litigation

In June a panel of the D.C. Circuit decided Howard v. Office of the CAO, in which a former congressional employee argued the Speech or Debate Clause did not bar her lawsuit challenging adverse employment action under the Congressional Accountability Act. If it stands, the case resolves a question left open by Fields v. Office of Eddie Bernice Johnson, 459 F.3d 1 (D.C. Cir. 2006) (en banc), appeal dismissed and cert. den. sub nom., Office of Senator Mark Dayton v. Hanson, 550 U.S. 511 (2007). However, the Chief Administrative Officer of the House has petitioned for rehearing en banc, and the D.C. Circuit has ordered Howard to file a response, so it is possible the Howard case will be reheard by the full court.

Continue reading “Speech or Debate in Congressional Employment Litigation”

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Rob Natelson on the Article V Convention

In an article recently published in the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Professor Rob Natelson provides a brief but illuminating summary of how the Article V convention fits within the constitutional plan designed by the Founders. Natelson, the nation’s foremost expert on state initiation of constitutional amendments, explains that the Article V convention played a pivotal role in addressing two main arguments made by anti-Federalists, who predicted that the Constitution would undermine the sovereignty and autonomy of the states:

The first argument was that the Constitution granted too much power to the federal government, which could lead to abuse of that power. The second argument was more subtle but ultimately proved more prescient: Even if the Constitution, when honestly, fairly, and objectively read, did not give the federal government excessive power, ambitious and clever people would nonetheless twist its language to justify the seizure by the central government of enormous power, regardless of the understanding of those who wrote and ratified the instrument.

R. Natelson, The Article V Convention Process and the Restoration of Federalism, 36 Harv. J. Law & Pub. Pol’y 955, 956 (Spring 2013).

The Article V convention responded to both of these arguments, as Madison and Hamilton took pains to point out in The Federalist. First, thanks to the convention process, Article V “equally enables the general and the state governments, to originate the amendment of errors, as they may be pointed out by the experience on one side or on the other.” Federalist No. 43 (Madison). Thus, to the extent the Constitution proved to give too much power to the “general government,” the states could “originate the amendment of errors” without being subject to a congressional veto. This addressed the fear that any excessive national power would be permanently entrenched.

Second, the Article V convention process gave the state legislatures a significant constitutional power to counteract overreach by Congress or the federal government. Hamilton explained in Federalist No. 85 that, as a consequence of Article V’s design, “[w]e may safely rely on the disposition of the state legislators to erect barriers against the encroachments of the national authority.” Thus, Natelson observes: “[T]he Founders saw the amendment procedure as more than a way of responding to changed circumstances. They saw it as a tool for curbing excesses and abuses.” 36 Harv. J. Law & Pub. Pol’y at 957.

While no Article V convention has ever been called, Natelson points out that state legislatures can use their power short of actually calling a convention. Id. at 959. If “state legislatures flex[] their Article V muscles by applying, in a concerted manner, for a convention to propose amendments,” they can force Congress to propose an amendment as the price of not actually triggering the convention call. Id. Thus, “the States forced the United States Senate to agree to the Seventeenth Amendment . . . when thirty-one of the necessary thirty-two [at the time] applied for a convention limited to proposing a direct election amendment.” Id. at 959-60.

Continue reading “Rob Natelson on the Article V Convention”