So it looks like the big to-do over the House deeming its work to be law without the consent of the Senate or President may have been more about media spin — and the failure of the House leadership to be clear — than reality. The bill caused all the fuss by incorporating H.R. 1 within itself, a perfectly suitable legislative device. But that action appears to have been misunderstood as purporting to enact law without the required Constitutional process:
There is no specific provision in this bill that says the roles of the Senate and president are to be discarded. The only basis for saying this is that “hereby enacted into law” language — language that, again, is commonly used in bills — and which makes sense if you view this as a bill incorporating another bill, whose provisions will indeed be enacted into law if the Senate approves the bill and the president signs it….
There is no deeming in this bill. This bill says one thing and one thing only about H.R. 1, and that is, that if the Senate cannot act, we are going to give the Senate some cover. If the Senate doesn’t want to commit to H.R. 1 for the remainder of the year, we give them the opportunity to incorporate the language of H.R. 1 into this bill, send it to the President’s desk for his signature, make it the law of the land, while we continue to work to sort out our budget differences.
…. The Senate will still have to pass this bill. The president will still have to sign it. There is nothing unconstitutional about that.
Patterico also notes that the bill opens with the usual language: ‘Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled…” — which cuts against the notion they were trying to do an end-run around the most basic of their Constitutional duties.
I admit, I got fooled here, too. So many people from across the spectrum were describing this bill the same way, I just presumed it was some sort of publicity stunt. That’s what I get for relying on media accounts instead of looking to the text of the bill itself when I see something that doesn’t look right. As often as they get even simple facts wrong, I should have learned by now.
