Origination Clause
The clause reads as follows: 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.The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 and adopted in 1789.
How could it be determined which was the primary or predominant one; or whether it was necessary that revenue shd: be the sole object, in exclusion even of other incidental effects.Regarding the decision to allow Senate amendments, some of the reasoning was given by Theophilus Parsons during the convention in Massachusetts that ratified the Constitution.
"[13] Grayson was not convinced by Madison's argument that "the first part of the clause is sufficiently expressed to exclude all doubts" about where the origination must occur.
They in a word hold the purse; that powerful instrument by which we behold, in the history of the British constitution, an infant and humble representation of the people, gradually enlarging the sphere of its activity and importance, and finally reducing, as far as it seems to have wished, all the overgrown prerogatives of the other branches of the government.
This power over the purse, may in fact be regarded as the most compleat and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure.The clause resonated with a citizenry opposed to taxation without representation.
Much less would a bill be so deemed, which merely regulated the value of foreign or domestic coins, or authorized a discharge of insolvent debtors upon assignments of their estates to the United States, giving a priority of payment to the United States in cases of insolvency, although all of them might incidentally bring, revenue into the treasury.The U.S. Supreme Court has decided several cases involving this clause, and all of those challenges to federal statutes failed.
[18] For example, in the 1911 case of Flint v. Stone Tracy Company, the Court held, "The amendment was germane to the subject-matter of the bill and not beyond the power of the Senate to propose.
[20] The U.S. Supreme Court has expressed willingness to address such issues, according to its 1990 opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall in Munoz-Flores: A law passed in violation of the Origination Clause would thus be no more immune from judicial scrutiny because it was passed by both Houses and signed by the President than would be a law passed in violation of the First Amendment.In 2012, the joint dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius mentioned that "the Constitution requires tax increases to originate in the House of Representatives" per the Origination Clause,[26] though that issue was not addressed by the majority opinion.
[27] In 2014, Sissel v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a challenge to the Affordable Care Act brought by the Pacific Legal Foundation based upon the clause was rejected by a panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia,[28] and that court later declined a request to put the matter before all of its judges ("en banc") over a lengthy dissent authored by Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
