The House may send S 510 back to the Senate on constitutional grounds

  Yesterday the Senate passed S 510–the Food Safety Modernization Act–and it seemed as if this bill was destined to become law, all that was left to send this bill to the president was to reconcile the Senate and House versions of this bill. On the surface this bill seems benevolent enough, after all who does not want to ensure the safety of the food they will be eating? But once you delve into the bill you find that there are some very troubling issues related to this bill which you can read in one of my previous posts here.

  But there is one small problem with the Senate version of the bill according to this article:

Section 107 of the bill includes a set of fees that are classified as revenue raisers, which are technically taxes under the Constitution

  The problem is that the constitution requires all revenue bills originate in the House of Representatives, not in the Senate, and the House of Representatives appears ready to block this bill on constitutional grounds. If the House asserts its power over revenue bills and sends this bill back to the Senate there is the very real possibility that the bill will be stalled until the new Congress is sworn in–this could be the death knell for the Food Safety Modernization Act, because it will leave Harry Reid and the current Senate with only two options:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could simply drop the issue and let the next session of Congress start from scratch

    Or:

he could try to force the issue in the Senate after the House passes a new version of the bill.

  If he were to choose the second option, it would take valuable time away from the Senate for debate on other more pressing issues that should be addressed during the current Congress, IE the Bush tax cuts. If Harry Reid wants to debate this bill AND other more pressing bills he would need to use unanimous consent to limit debate on this bill and it is very unlikely that he will be able to convince Republicans in the Senate to agree to limit debate on this issue.

  So Harry Reid has a choice to make: does he feel the food safety bill is of enough import that the Senate should forsake the other issues facing the Congress, or does he sacrifice the other issues in order to pass the food safety bill? If the House sends this bill back to the Senate I have to believe that Harry Reid will drop it and move on. It would be political suicide not to address the issues that the American people care much more deeply about than this little known bill.

  All eyes are on the House, in my opinion they cannot concede their constitutional authority to the Senate. The founders felt that it was of the utmost import that the branch of government most close to the people should be the branch of government that decided how the people spent their dollars. To surrender this authority on a bill that was snuck through the Congress before the American people had a chance to even learn about this bill would be a travesty.

  This bill should be delayed until the new Congress is convened and the American people have had the opportunity to read the bill. We have seen what happens when bills are not read before they become law and the results are less than stellar, the Congress cannot afford to make the same mistake again.