Ignoring The Constitution May Doom Immigration Deal
no bill rather than a bad bill
By California Yankee Posted in Immigration — Comments (26) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Senate should know better, especially after last year.
The U.S. Constitution’s “Origination Clause” (Article 1, Section 7) requires that revenue-related bills to originate in the House; therefore, some argued that the back-taxes provision in the Senate's Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2006 was unconstitutional.
The Senate's current immigration deal requires that illegal aliens to pay back taxes before becoming citizens, thereby reopening the door for any member of the House to block the proposed Senate immigration deal by issuing a blue-slip, the color of the paper used for the resolution which formally declares that there has been a violation of the "Origination Clause." The bill would then be returned to the Senate for the appropriate constitutionally permissible reforms.
According to the Hill, several House members are "lying in wait for the Senate to 'make the same mistake twice.'”
“We’d rather have no bill than a bad bill,” Kurt Bardella, spokesman for Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.), said. The House Immigration Reform Caucus that Bilbray chairs, bitterly opposed to the Senate bill, “will use any and every means necessary to see that the American people get the immigration [reform] they deserve,” Bardella added.The list of House GOP critics who could race to blue-slip the Senate bill is a long one. Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), both staking presidential bids on opposition to citizenship for illegal immigrants, and Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) all said through press secretaries that they are considering any and all options to counter the Senate bill. [Read on ...]
Last year, then Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, tried to resolve the constitutional procedural issue in the usual way, proposing to attach the immigration bill to a tax bill that had already passed the House. It would then proceed to a "conference committee," where negotiators from the House and Senate hammer out differences between the two chambers' immigration bills. But Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid refused to go along with that fix. I presume that was because the Democrats decided they could gain a partisan political advantage if there was no immigration reform before the midterm elections.
Just like last year, the Senate's immigration deal may be doomed to never make it to a conference committee. Under House rules, any member can introduce a "blue-slip resolution" to return the legislation to the Senate, potentially killing the so-called "immigration reform" effort. Why would the Democratic lead Senate make the same mistake twice? Do the Democrats want to scuttle this year's immigration reform as Reid and company did last year?
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Ignoring The Constitution May Doom Immigration Deal 26 Comments (0 topical, 26 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
... if the Bill is blue-slipable. I'm iggernant about the ins and outs of the legislative process. I'm not iggernant about taxes though. I'm sticking to my guns. The newest Bill doesn't raise revenues, it merely insists on collecting them. And it's almost moot anyway, since working poor people don't pay enough US tax to pay for John Edwards' haircuts... uh, sorry, bad analogy.
I just hate to see good conservative folks going off half cocked. And I think the Constitutional issues raised on this thread are only about 40% cocked.
As has been written about here, illegals will not be required to pay back the taxes they owe.
See here for details:
http://www.azcentral.com/blogs/index.php?blog=300&title=senate_adopts_mc...
Romney or Fred.
So part of the reason for removing the back tax collection may have been to prevent the House from blue-slipping the legislation?
Please answer directly. Is this legislation blue-slippable?
Thank you.
any new revenues most originate in the House, including collection of back taxes from those here illegally. From what I gathered, this isn't limited to new taxes. If that is correct, the answer is yes, it can be blue-slipped.
The White House initially stripped the draft legislation of the requirement of payment of back taxes ostensibly because "it would be difficult," to paraphrase. It is more likely they hadn't forgotten a half year ago. Sen. McCain, by voice vote, reinserted that provision I learned yesterday, which explains why the president suddenly boasted about it in Georgia.
The IRS currently maintains that everybody working and earning income in America must pay their share of income taxes regardless of their immigration status. That is why they currently issue Taxpayer ID Nos to illegals. That is the current law. Illegals owe taxes.
If this new law forgives those taxes then it is effectively a tax cut. In my mind that is a change to current tax law and as such is a new revenue bill which arguably should originate in the House.
Also revenues are not just income taxes. Revenue is a much broader word than tax. Recall that back when the Constitution was written there were NO income taxes. This bill spells out a variety of fees and fines and all of those are "revenues".
Yes, this legislation is "blue-slippable"
From The Hill article:
Any House member can move to blue-slip a Senate-originated bill that raises revenue, though the protest requires a majority vote to send the legislation back across the Capitol and force immigration negotiators back to square one.[. . .]
The back-taxes provision that could trigger the blue slip came from Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who continues to take heavy fire on the presidential hustings for supporting the immigration deal. McCain introduced a back-taxes amendment after a conference call in which Republican bloggers mentioned reports that the Bush administration had asked that this year’s bill not force the very costly process of tax collection among illegal immigrants.
The precedents in the House construe "a bill for raising revenue" broadly and include any "meaningful revenue proposal."
According to this, it won't get sent back without a majority vote to do so. Would it proceed as normal or would the blueslip hold it up beyond a failed vote?
... and didn't see anything that said anything about forgiveness of old taxes. It might say that. Maybe I skimmed over it, but the fact is poor people don't pay much tax - they usually get refunds. Most illegals don't have tax deficiencies.
Did you provide the link so as to cite yourself as authority? The only other person I've seen do that is Alan Dershowitz. (Hey, nothing personal, just kidding yah...)
Before the recess, Sen. Jeff Sessions introduced an amendment to prevent that from happening. Sen. Kennedy then bellowed (and it sounded drunkenly) something along the lines the EITC "is for children, it's for children." Given that cystal clear insight and obviously received wisdom, there is little doubt the White House and GOP Senate negotiators will work tirelessly to defeat Sessions' amendment if and when it comes to the floor next week.
The Sessions amendment is practically meaningless. Nonresident aliens are NOT eligible for the EITC under current law unless they are MARRIED to a citizen or permanent resident. That is a very small universe of people, and VERY few illegals are married to a citizen.
A *non-resident* alien cannot be eligible for the earned income tax credit individual unless he is married to a citizen or resident of the United States and elects to be treated as a U.S. resident under IR Code Section 6013(g) or Code Section 6013(h).
The universe of resident aliens is large. So under present law, resident aliens get the earned income credit if they are working poor.
For all practical purposes, what the earned income tax credit accomplishes is that it indirectly exempts the working poor from social security taxes.
Working poor people do not pay income taxes. Working poor people get their social security taxes offset by the earned income tax credit. This is true whether they are aliens or citizens.
Other than the "for-sure's for" (McCain, Graham, etc.) and the "for sure's against" (Cornyn, Inhofe, DeMint, and co.), where does everyone else stand? Are there some Dems who will vote against this from the left?
“.....women and minorities hardest hit”
Menendez, Sanders, and several other labor union lackeys oppose this bill because it would threaten the power of the unions with additional non-union workers.
Menendez, Sanders, and several other labor union lackeys oppose this bill because it would threaten the power of the unions with additional non-union workers.
"all bills for raising revenue."
If illegals did have to pay back taxes, this should apply. Arguably if they don't, too, as it constitutes a decision not to raise revenue.
If illegals don't have to pay back taxes, watch for an Equal Protection challenge by a US citizen who owes back taxes. I believe Chertoff's rationale for not collecting back taxes from illegals was that it was too hard. It was probably hard to go after Al Capone for tax evasion, but the feds did it.
I would like to see a US Solicitor General arguing in front of the Supreme Court that it's just too hard to collect back taxes from illegals, as opposed to citizens, so they shouldn't have to do it.
Who would have standing to sue the government for failing to collect back taxes? I'm not sure anyone would.
And anyway, DHS doesn't collect back taxes, the IRS does. So your entire story about Chertoff doesn't make any sense. The IRS has the discretion to go after whoever it thinks it can collect from the easiest. It's very hard to collect back taxes from teenage babysitters who don't report the cash payments they receive from parents. Are you going to file an equal protection lawsuit because the IRS doesn't audit teenage babysitters?
Good luck with all that.
It would be nice if this travesty would be this easy to kill, but, alas, this will only be a delay, not a burial. All the House has to do if the bill is blue-slipped is introduce and pass the exact same measure immediately after the blue slip vote (assuming it passes). Maybe some cosmetic changes will have to be made, but the bill will essentialy be laundered in the House and sent back to the Senate for final passage.
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Develop alternatives to existing policies and keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. Milton Friedman
The only thing they ever passed quickly was the telemarketing bill. (Aka the this time we really mean it law) That was something that had higher levels of support than the patriot act after 9/11. Do you really think they could quickly get this through ?
I mean all it would take is to point out to a couple of congresscritters this would be their stamp on history. Or a few others that they will unelectable.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
I think you have the House confused with the Senate. The House rams through major bills several times a week. That's what the House does. It's the Senate where bad House bills go to die. Your comment is completely bizarre, and suggests a disturbing ignorance about congressional process.
Look at pelosi's hundred hour agenda for actual house speed start to finish.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
What's to stop them from removing the tax aspects altogether by amendment?
Better yet, lets just keep it in the Senate.
We've traded our National Sovereignty for cheap roofing and yardwork.
Wouldn't the fines included in the bill constitute revenue for the Government?
The Senate bill doesn't impose new taxes, it merely says that the bureaucrats can't wink and look the other way when they find an immigrant that has failed to pay the taxes that he owes.
News flash: a resident alien is taxed just exactly like a US citizen.
News flash: working poor people usually get a refund.