<DOC>
[Hinds Precedents -- Volume II]
[From the U.S. Government Printing Office via GPO Access]
[DOCID: f:hinds_xlvii.wais]
Chapter XLVII.
PREROGATIVES OF THE HOUSE AS TO REVENUE LEGISLATION.
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1. Provision of the Constitution. Section 1480.
2. Action as to revenue bills and amendments originated by the
Senate. Sections 1481-1499.
3. Discussions as to origination of appropriation bills by the
Senate. Sections 1500, 1501.
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1480. Revenue bills must originate in the House, but the Senate may
concur with amendments.--The Constitution of the United States in
section 7 of Article I 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.
1481. In 1807 the House refused to agree to Senate amendments
enlarging the scope of a revenue bill.--On February 26, 1807,\1\ the
House considered the amendments proposed by the Senate to the bill
entitled ``An act repealing the acts laying duties on salt, and
continuing in force, for a further time, the first section of the act
entitled `An act further to protect the commerce and seamen of the
United States against the Barbary powers,' '' and it was
Resolved, That this House do disagree to the amendments of the
Senate; and do adhere to the said bill as the same originally passed
this House, and was sent to the Senate for their concurrence.
The same day a message announced that the Senate adhered to their
amendment, so the bill was lost.
The record of debates \2\ shows that Mr. John Randolph, of Virginia,
assailed the Senate amendments because they went beyond amendment of
the details of the bill, whereas under the Constitution he believed the
Senate had no power to amend a money bill by varying the objects or
altering the quantum.
1482. In 1830 a bill affecting the revenue was presented in the
Senate and withdrawn, after a discussion of the constitutional
question.--On February 23, 1830,\3\ in the Senate, Mr. Thomas H.
Benton, of Missouri, proposed a bill ``to provide for the abolition of
unnecessary duties, to relieve the
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\1\ Second session Ninth Congress, Journal, pp. 611, 613 (Gales &
Seaton, ed.).
\2\ Annals, pp. 630-636.
\3\ First session Twenty-first Congress, Debates, pp. 172, 244, 245.
Sec. 1483
people from sixteen millions of taxes, and to improve the condition of
the agriculture, manufactures, commerce, and navigation of the United
States.''
One section of this bill proposed to raise the duty on certain
articles, and a question arose as to the Constitutional power of the
Senate to originate such a measure.
Mr. Daniel Webster, of Massachusetts, having urged that the question
was very important and merited a long discussion, Mr. Benton, on March
5, withdrew the bill.
1483. A bill to abolish a duty was refused consideration in the
Senate, one objection being that the Senate had no right to originate
such a measure.--On February 11, 1831,\1\ in the Senate, Mr. Thomas H.
Benton, of Missouri, asked leave to introduce a bill for the gradual
abolition of the duty on alum salt.
This motion was opposed on two grounds, because a similar bill was on
the table of the Senate already, and because the bill belonged to a
class of revenue bills which the Senate did not have the right to
originate.
Leave to introduce the bill was refused, yeas 17, nays 27.
1484. Early instances of Senate and House participation in revenue
legislation.--On February 16, 1833, the bill (S. 121) to amend the act
to alter and amend the several acts imposing duties on imports,
approved July 14, 1832, was introduced on report from Committee on
Finance in the Senate.\2\ This bill restored the duty on certain
articles of copper and tobacco.\3\ It passed the Senate February 22,\4\
and being sent to the House, was, on February 27,\5\ reported favorably
from the Committee on Ways and Means and referred to the Committee on
the Whole House on the state of the Union. This bill was not considered
further, and should not be confounded with the following: (S. 115) ``To
modify the act of the 14th of July, 1832, and all other acts imposing
duties on imports,'' introduced by Mr. Henry Clay, of Kentucky,
February 12, 1833.\6\ Objection was made by Mr. John Forsyth, of
Georgia, and others, that the bill was not constitutional, as the
Senate did not have the power to originate such a bill.\7\ The bill was
considered and carried to a third reading, when, on February 26, it was
laid on the table,\8\ the bill of the House (H. R. 641) being received
in the Senate at that time. This House bill had originally been
reported on December 27,\9\ but, on February 25, on motion of Mr.
Robert P. Letcher, of Kentucky, the Senate bill proposed by Mr. Clay
had been moved as a substitute and adopted, retaining, however, the
House number\10\ This bill passed the Senate and became a law.\11\
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\1\ Second session Twenty-first Congress, Debates, p. 194.
\2\ Second session Twenty-second Congress, Senate Journal, p. 187.
\3\ Senate Journal, p. 314.
\4\ Senate Journal, p. 204.
\5\ House Journal, pp. 405, 434.
\6\ Senate Journal, p. 171; Debates, p. 462.
\7\ Debates, pp. 473, 479.
\8\ Senate Journal, pp. 211-213; Debates, p. 786.
\9\ House Journal, p. 105.
\10\ House Journal, p. 415; Debates, p. 1772.
\11\ House Journal, p. 476.
Sec. 1485
1485. The Senate having insisted on its right to add a revenue
amendment to an appropriation bill, the House declined to proceed
further with the bill.
Instance of a conference over the prerogatives of the two Houses
respecting revenue legislation.
An instance wherein a conference committee appointed to consider a
question of prerogative only originated and reported a bill.
On March 3, 1859,\1\ Mr. Galusha A. Grow, of Pennsylvania, as a
question of privilege, offered this resolution:
Resolved, That House bill No. 872, making appropriations for
defraying the expenses of the Post-Office Department for the year
ending 30th June, 1860, with the Senate amendments thereto, be returned
to the Senate, as section 13 of said amendments is in the nature of a
revenue measure.
Mr. Grow explained that section 13 raised the rate of postage.
Mr. John S. Phelps, of Missouri, contended that the revenue bills
which should originate only in the House were such only as were
contemplated in this clause of the Constitution.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties,
imposts, and excises.
The question being taken, the resolution was agreed to, yeas 116,
nays 78.
The resolution of the House having been received in the Senate, Mr.
John J. Crittenden, of Kentucky, proposed the following resolutions,
which were agreed to: \2\
Resolved by the Senate of the United States, That the Senate and
House, being of right equally competent, each to judge of the propriety
and constitutionality of its own action, the Senate has exercised said
right in its action on the amendments sent to the House, leaving to the
House its right to adopt or reject each of said amendments at its
pleasure.
Resolved, That this resolution be communicated to the House of
Representatives, and that the bill and amendments aforesaid be
transmitted therewith.
This message, with the bill and amendments, having been received in
the House,\3\ a motion to take them up under suspension of the rules
failed, yeas 94, nays 85. Thereupon Mr. Phelps, from the Committee on
Ways and Means,\4\ reported a new appropriation bill for the Post-
Office service, which was passed as H. R. No. 893.
In the Senate objection was made to this bill, and it went to the
table, while a discussion arose as to the propriety of the
parliamentary action \5\ taken by the House.
Mr. Charles E. Stuart, of Michigan, offered this preamble and
resolution:
The House of Representatives having, in the opinion of the Senate,
departed from the proper parliamentary usages and method of transacting
business between the two Houses by its action in regard to the bill of
the House (No. 872), entitled ``An act making appropriations for the
service of the Post-Office Department during the fiscal year ending the
30th of June, 1860:'' Therefore
Resolved, That the Senate appoint a committee of conference to meet a
like committee on the part of the House of Representatives, for the
purpose of consulting as to what action ought to be had by the
respective Houses respecting the said bill.
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\1\ Second session Thirty-fifth Congress, Journal, p. 571; Globe, pp.
1666, 1667.
\2\ Globe, p. 1634.
\3\ Globe, p. 1674; Journal, pp. 587, 591.
\4\ The Committee on Ways and Means at that time reported
appropriation bills.
\5\ Globe, pp. 1644-1646.
Sec. 1486
The resolution being agreed to, Messrs. Stuart, James A. Pearce, of
Maryland, and Solomon Foot, of Vermont, were appointed conferees on the
part of the Senate.
This message being received in the House,\1\ a question arose as to
whether the conferees, if a conference should be agreed to, would have
before them the bill (H. R. 872), which was before the House. The
Speaker \2\ ruled that the bill would remain in possession of the
House. The House agreed to the conference, and Messrs. J. Letcher, of
Virginia; L. O'B. Branch, of North Carolina, and Galusha A. Grow, of
Pennsylvania, were appointed conferees.
In the last hours of the session this report was presented to the
House \3\ from the committee of conference:
The committee of conference on the disagreement between the two
Houses on the resolutions adopted by them, respectively, in relation to
the action of the House on the Senate amendments to the bill (H. R.
872) making appropriations, etc., having met, after full and free
conference, have agreed as follows:
That while neither House is understood to waive any constitutional
right which they may respectively consider to belong to them, it be
recommended to the House to pass the accompanying bill, and that the
Senate concur in the same when it shall be sent to them.
The conference report having been agreed to, Mr. Letcher introduced
the bill, which was numbered H. R. 894, and it was passed.\4\ No point
of order was made in the House against this proceeding. But in the
Senate \5\ Mr. Pearce referred to the fact that there was doubt of the
power of the conferees to originate and report the bill. The principal
objections to the bill were constitutional, however. It was urged,
especially by Mr. Robert Toombs, of Georgia, that by passing the bill
the Senate would surrender to the House a constitutional prerogative.
Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, of Illinois, urged that the public service
should not be crippled by a punctilio between the Senate and House; but
this failed to move Messrs. Toombs, David C. Broderick, of California,
and Judah P. Benjamin, of Louisiana, who interposed their objection to
the second reading of the bill. In the midst of a speech by Mr. Toombs
the hour of final adjournment arrived, and the Vice President declared
the Senate adjourned sine die.\6\
1486. The House having questioned a Senate amendment providing a tax
on incomes on a nonrevenue bill, the Senate withdrew the amendment.--On
June 30, 1864,\7\ Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, submitted the
following:
Resolved, That the amendment of the section, being section No. 12,
added by the Senate to House bill No. 549, in the opinion of this
House, contravenes the first clause of the seventh section of the first
article of the Constitution of the United States, and is an
infringement of the privileges of this House, and that the said bill,
with the amendments, be respectfully returned to the Senate with a
message communicating this resolution.
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\1\ Globe, p. 1682; Journal, p. 598.
\2\ James L. Orr, of South Carolina, Speaker.
\3\ Globe, p. 1684; Journal, p. 617.
\4\ Journal, p. 618.
\5\ Globe, pp. 1661-1663.
\6\ In a speech made December 29, 1859, Mr. Grow quoted from the
decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of United
States v. Bromley (12 Howard, p. 96) to show that legislation affecting
postage was revenue legislation. (Cong. Globe, first session Thirty-
sixth Congress, pp. 278, 279.)
\7\ First session Thirty-eighth Congress, Journal, pp. 963, 968;
Globe, p. 3427.
Sec. 1487
The bill (H. R. 549) further to regulate and provide for the
enrolling and calling out of the national forces had been returned from
the Senate with amendments, among which was No. 12, providing for a 5
per cent duty on all incomes to meet the cost of paying bounties and
enforcing the draft.
Mr. Stevens said:
It is so clearly a violation of the privileges of the House that I
think it ought not for a moment to be acquiesced in.
Without further debate the House agreed to the resolution.
The same day a message from the Senate announced that they, on
reconsideration, had again passed the bill with all amendments
previously concurred in except the section objected to by the House.
1487. After a full but unconclusive conference with the Senate, the
House reaffirmed its own exclusive right to originate revenue measures.
There being a difference between the two Houses as to the right of
the Senate to originate a revenue bill, the subject was committed to a
conference.
A resolution relating to an alleged invasion of the prerogatives of
the House presents a question of privilege.
On January 27, 1871,\1\ Mr. Samuel Hooper, of Massachusetts, from the
Committee on Ways and Means, as a question of privilege, submitted the
following:
Resolved, That Senate bill 1083, to repeal so much of the act
approved July 14, 1870, entitled ``An act to reduce internal taxes, and
for other purposes,'' as continues the income tax after the 31st day of
December, 1869, be returned to that body with the respectful suggestion
on the part of the House that section 7 of Article I of the
Constitution vests in the House of Representatives the sole power to
originate such measures.
The Speaker \2\ having ruled that this presented a question of
privilege, the resolution was agreed to.
The message was received in the Senate on January 30, and on the
succeeding day was considered.\3\ After debate the Senate adopted a
preamble and resolution reciting the action of the House, and
continuing:
And whereas the parliamentary law recognized by both Houses of
Congress states that when the methods of Parliament are thought by the
one House to have been departed from by the other a conference is asked
to come to a right understanding thereon: Therefore,
Resolved, That the bill be returned to the House of Representatives,
and that the Senate ask a conference on the question at issue between
the Houses.
Messrs. John Scott, of Pennsylvania, Roscoe Conkling, of New York,
and Eugene Casserly, of California, were appointed conferees on the
part of the Senate.
The House agreed to the conference,\4\ appointing Messrs. Hooper,
William B. Allison, of Iowa, and Daniel W. Voorhees, of Indiana, to
represent the House.
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\1\ Third Session Forty-first Congress, Journal p. 227; Globe, p.
791.
\2\ James G. Blaine, of Maine, Speaker.
\3\ Globe, pp. 815, 842-846.
\4\ Journal, p. 247; Globe, p. 862.
Sec. 1488
During the debate Mr. Samuel J. Randall, of Pennsylvania, inquired as
to the scope of the conference. The Speaker replied:
When, on a previous occasion, on a post-office appropriation bill, a
conference was asked by the Senate, it was granted by the House. The
only thing, of course, committed to the conference is the point of
difference. The bill will in no wise be in the hands of the conference
for action. But the point of difference in 1859 between the two Houses
was, at the request of the Senate, allowed to go to a conference
committee. And the Chair states that under the uniform usage and
courtesy observed between the two branches the usual way is to have a
conference.
1488. This conference having failed to agree, on February 27, 1871,
Mr. Hooper, for the House managers, submitted the reasons \1\ which
formed the basis of their action in the joint committee of conference,
accompanied by this resolution:
Resolved, That this House maintains that it is its sole and exclusive
privilege to originate all bills directly affecting the revenue,
whether such bills be for the imposition, reduction, or repeal of
taxes; and in the exercise of this privilege, in the first instance, to
limit and appoint the ends, purposes, considerations, and limitations
of such bills, whether relating to the matter, manner, measure, or time
of their introduction; subject to the right of the Senate to ``propose
or concur with amendments, as in other bills.''
The House conferees, in their report, stated that the Senate's
request for a conference had been granted as an act of courtesy, the
question involved being the privilege of the House. At the meeting of
the conference the Senate conferees had submitted and maintained
throughout these propositions:
First. That the words ``all bills for raising revenue shall originate
in the House of Representatives,'' in the seventh section of the first
article of the Constitution, mean only bills the direct purpose of
which is to raise revenue by the levy of taxes, imposts, duties, or
excises.
Second. That a bill may originate in the Senate to repeal a law or
portion of a law imposing such taxes, duties, imposts, or excise, even
if the repeal of such repeal [law?] render necessary the imposition of
other taxes; and Senate bill (S. 1083) being such an act, it is within
the constitutional power of the Senate to originate it.
The committee on the part of the House maintained in reply that,
according to the true intent and meaning of the Constitution, it is the
right of the House of Representatives to originate all bills relating
directly to taxation, including all bills imposing or remitting taxes;
and that in the exercise of this right the House of Representatives
shall decide the manner and time of the imposition and remission of all
taxes, subject to the right of the Senate to amend any of such bills,
originating in the House, before they have become a law.
After a long and full discussion the conferees failed to agree, and
arranged to report to their respective Houses their disagreement, and
such further report as they might decide to make. The House conferees
therefore presented a report giving at length the reasons on which they
had founded their action. From a careful review of the proceedings of
the Constitutional Convention and a consideration of the analogy of the
British constitution they derived the opinion that all bills directly
affecting the revenue should originate in the House of Representatives.
``The practice of the English Commons,'' says the report, ``was to have
all tax bills considered by a committee called the ways and means, and
all appropriations were considered by a committee on supply. Analogous
to this, the first Congress that assembled provided
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\1\ House Report No. 42.
Sec. 1488
a Committee of Ways and Means that should originate all revenue
measures, whether of taxation or appropriation. The same Congress also
borrowed another rule from the Commons, that this class of bills should
be first considered in Committee of the Whole House on a day fixed, so
that free discussion should be permitted and unlimited amendment
allowed.
``Under these rules the right to originate not only tax and tariff
bills, but also appropriation bills, was conceded to the House of
Representatives until February 22, 1832, when Mr. Clay submitted
certain resolutions in relation to the tariff, by which it was proposed
to repeal the duties on all articles of importation not coming into
competition with similar articles manufactured in the United States,
etc.''
``These resolutions were referred to the Committee on Manufactures,
which committee, on the 30th of March, made a long report, accompanied
by a bill proposing an absolute repeal of certain duties.'' This report
led to a long debate on the constitutional power of the Senate to
originate revenue bills or repeal duties. Finally, on motion of Mr.
Dallas, the bill was laid on the table.\1\
``The question again came up in the Senate in 1833,'' continues the
report, ``when, at a time of great political excitement, reaching
almost to rebellion, Mr. Clay, with a patriotic purpose, brought
forward in the Senate his compromise tariff bill to reduce existing
rates of duty on imported articles. The leading minds of the Senate
revolted at what seemed to them an unconstitutional exercise of power,
and the authority of the Senate under the clause now under
consideration was debated by the ablest lawyers of that body.'' \2\
On February 27 the bill was laid on the table, a House bill for the
same purpose having reached the Senate. The House bill was passed. In
1837, also, the Senate passed a bill to authorize the issue of Treasury
notes. In the House, the question of the Senate's power being raised,
the Senate bill was laid aside and a House bill covering the same
object was passed.\3\ The report continues:
The question again appeared in the Senate in 1844, Mr. McDuffie
introducing a bill to revive the act of March 2, 1833, known as the
compromise tariff act, and modify the existing duties upon foreign
imports in conformity to its provisions, the effect of which would be
to largely reduce the duties and rates of duty provided for by the
tariff act of 1842. The question of power, together with the bill, was
referred to the Senate Committee on Finance, and on the 9th of January,
1844, was reported back to the Senate from that committee by Mr. Evans
without amendment, accompanied by the following resolution:
``Resolved, That the bill * * * is a bill for raising revenue within
the meaning of the seventh section of the first article of the
Constitution, and can not, therefore, originate in the Senate:
Therefore,
``Resolved, That it be indefinitely postponed.''
After a long debate the resolution was adopted with but four
dissenting votes.\4\
The report also refers to the action of the Senate in 1856, when it
originated appropriation bills, which were tabled by the House.
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\1\ Mr. Clay introduced his resolutions early in January, 1832. For
introduction, report, and debate see Congressional Debates, first
session Twenty-second Congress, pp. 66, 647, 678.
\2\ Congressional Debates, second session Twenty-second Congress, pp.
462, 750.
\3\ First session Twenty-fifth Congress, Journal, pp. 77, 79, 212.
\4\ First session Twenty-eighth Congress, Globe, pp. 121, 633. For
Senate debates at this time see Globe, pp. 162, 168, 176, 180, 186,
205, 222, 673, 674.
Sec. 1489
Next the report takes up certain citations of laws, fourteen in all,
which had originated in the Senate, and which the Senate conferees had
claimed were precedents, saying:
They seem to be, generally, bills intended to carry out, in good
faith, treaty stipulations and commercial regulations arising under
treaties with foreign countries. It is true that two of the acts cited
reduced existing rates of duty, which reduction was acquiesced in by
the House without raising the question of power. But it seems to your
committee that one or two instances of waiver can not be considered as
a surrender, on the part of the House, of a great constitutional
privilege.
The committee also cite the loan bill in the Twenty-seventh Congress,
saying:
The House does not deny the power of the Senate to amend any
particular bill relating to revenue whether a loan bill, a tax bill, or
an appropriation bill, which is all that was decided in this case.
After citing the action of the House of Commons in 1860 in asserting
its paramount authority, both for the imposition and repeal of taxes,
the report says:
It is assumed that, because the bill under consideration is for the
purpose of absolutely repealing a tax, the Senate has jurisdiction. But
it seems to your committee clear that if the Senate can repeal one tax
they can repeal another, and thus originate measures affecting the
entire system of taxation. If, instead of repealing the income tax, the
Senate had originated and passed a measure repealing all laws imposing
duties on imports, it would at once become necessary for the House to
originate another measure imposing taxes to make up for the deficiency
created by this great loss of revenue. It seems to us plain that this
would be an interference with the present system of taxation, and
virtually the surrender of the power to originate tax measures
according to the will of the House. * * *
It seems clear to your committee, therefore, that the only way to
preserve, in its fullness, the power to originate bills for raising
revenue is to insist upon the right of the House to originate all bills
relating directly to the revenue, whether imposing or remitting taxes;
that the House should, in the first instance, be the judge of the
manner, the measure, and the time of such impositions or remissions.
On March 3, 1871, the resolution recommended by the committee was
agreed to by the House, without division, but after debate.\1\
The Senate conferees made to the Senate a report in which they
adduced arguments in support of their position that the bill was
properly passed by the Senate.\2\
1489. In 1872 the House and Senate, after discussion, disagreed as to
limitations of Senate amendments to a revenue bill of the House.--On
April 11, 1871,\3\ Mr. John Sherman, of Ohio, had reported in the
Senate with the unanimous indorsement of the Committee on Finance, the
following, which was agreed to without division, on April 12:
Resolved, That the Committee on Finance is hereby instructed, during
the recess of Congress, to carefully examine the existing system of
taxation by the United States, with a view to propose such amendments
to the bills of the House of Representatives repealing certain taxes
now pending in the Senate as will simplify, revise, and reduce both the
internal taxes and the duties on imported goods now in force, and in
such manner that the aggregate of such taxes shall not exceed the sums
required to execute the laws relating to the public debt and the
current expenditures of the Government, administered with the strictest
economy, and so that such taxes may also be distributed so as to impose
the least possible burden upon the people.
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\1\ Third session Forty-first Congress, Journal, p. 497; Globe, pp.
1928-1930. See also Globe Appendix, pp. 264-268, for speech of James A.
Garfield.
\2\ Senate Report No. 376.
\3\ First session Fifty-second Congress, Globe, pp. 565, 598.
Sec. 1489
There was little discussion, and apparently none on the question of
the privileges of the two Houses.
On April 19, 1871,\1\ on motion of Mr. George F. Hoar, of
Massachusetts, the House agreed to the following:
Resolved, That the Committee on Rules be directed to consider and
report to the House at its next session how far the existing practice
of amending, in the Senate, bills for raising revenue, by the addition
of enactments not germane to the original bill, is in conformity with
the Constitution, and whether any further rules or proceedings are
needed to preserve the privileges of the House in the matter.
It does not appear that the committee reported.
On April 2, 1872,\2\ Mr. Henry L. Dawes, of Massachusetts, from the
Committee on Ways and Means, reported the following resolution:
Resolved, That the substitution by the Senate, under the form of an
amendment, for the bill of the House (H. R. 1537) entitled ``An act to
repeal existing duties on tea and coffee,'' of a bill entitled ``An act
to reduce existing taxes,'' containing a general revision, reduction,
and repeal of laws imposing import duties and internal taxes, is in
conflict with the true intent and purpose of that clause of the
Constitution which requires that ``all bills for raising revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives;'' and that therefore said
substitute for House bill No. 1537 do lie upon the table.
And be it further resolved, That the Clerk of the House be, and is
hereby, directed to notify the Senate of the passage of the foregoing
resolution.
The resolution was debated at length, with reference to the principle
of government involved in the compromise which resulted in the adoption
of the provision of the Constitution,, and with reference to past
precedents and to the proper construction of the terms of the
constitutional provision. Mr. James Brooks, of New York, contributed as
unwritten history the fact of which he was personally cognizant, that
Mr. Clay, when he introduced the revenue reduction bill in the Senate
in 1832, did not intend or expect it to pass, but did so solely for the
purpose of causing a debate which should so instruct and influence the
House of Representatives that they would take action. This was what
happened, and as soon as the House, on the motion of his personal
friend, Mr. Letcher, had passed the bill, Mr. Clay abandoned his Senate
bill. In discussing the construction of the language of the
Constitution, Mr. James A. Garfield, of Ohio, said:
What then, is the reasonable limit to this right of amendment? It is
clear to my mind that the Senate's power to amend is limited to the
subject-matter of the bill. That limit is natural, is definite, and can
be clearly shown. If there had been no precedent in the case, I should
say that a House bill relating solely to revenue on salt could not be
amended by adding to it clauses raising revenue on textile fabrics, but
that all the amendments of the Senate should relate to the duty on
salt. To admit that the Senate can take a House bill consisting of two
lines, relating specifically and solely to a single article, and can
graft upon them in the name of an amendment a whole system of tariff
and internal taxation, is to say that they may exploit all the meaning
out of the clause of the Constitution which we are now, considering,
and may rob the House of the last vestige of its rights under that
clause. * * * Now I will not say, for I believe it can not be held, the
mere length of an amendment shall be any proof of invasion of
privileges of the House. True we sent to the Senate a bill of three or
four lines, and they have sent back a bill of twenty printed pages. I
do not deny their right to send back a bill of a thousand
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\1\ First session Forty-second Congress, Journal, p. 194; Globe, p.
802.
\2\ Second session Forty-second Congress, Journal, p. 620; Globe, pp.
2105, 2248, 2318, 2716.
Sec. 1489
pages as an amendment to our two lines. But I do insist that their
thousand pages must be on the subject-matter of our bill.\1\
The resolution reported by Mr. Dawes was agreed to by a vote of yeas
153, nays 9.
On April 8 the resolution of the House came up in the Senate, and was
referred to the Committee on Finance. On April 10 that committee
reported it back, Mr. John Sherman, of Ohio, saying that it was the
first time in the history of the country that the power of the Senate
to propose amendments to revenue bills had been questioned. The
Committee on Finance desired that the matter be referred for further
examination to the Committee on Privileges and Elections. This action
was taken, and on April 24 that committee made an elaborate report.
This report,\2\ which was submitted on behalf of the committee by Mr.
Matt. H. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, began with a review of the
circumstances attending the controversy, and proceeded:
Assuming that a bill to abolish a certain duty or tax is a bill for
raising revenue within the meaning of the Constitution, as the House of
Representatives determined in regard to the bill abolishing the tax
upon incomes, the power of the Senate in regard to it is regulated by
the provision of the Constitution.
The Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills,
and the right of the Senate to put upon it the amendments with which it
was returned to the House is, in the opinion of your committee, clearly
conferred by this provision.
Without the provision of the Constitution under consideration, it
will be conceded that such a bill might have originated in either House
of Congress, and originating, as in this case, in the House of
Representatives, the Senate might amend it in any particular and to any
extent. But this provision of the Constitution is a limitation upon the
power of the Senate which must be obeyed by the Senate to its full
extent, but should not be extended beyond the fair scope and plain
import of the phraseology employed. What, then, is the restriction laid
upon the Senate? Simply and only this: The Senate shall not
``originate'' a bill for raising revenue, that being the exclusive
prerogative of the House of Representatives. But, excepting only the
origination of the bill, the Senate possesses the same power in regard
to bills for raising revenue as in regard to any other bills; or, to
quote the language of the Constitution, it may amend a bill for raising
revenue as it may amend ``any other bill.''
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ In the preceding Congress (third session Forty-first Congress,
Appendix of Globe, p. 265) Mr. Garfield went into this subject very
elaborately. In that speech Mr. Garfield reviewed the English usage,
the circumstances attending the adoption of the clause in the
Constitution of the United States, and the following precedents of
Congress: In the House on January 25, 1789 (First Congress, Annals,
Vol. I, pp. 592, 593, 597, 603, 605, 607), where Madison, Livermore,
Gerry, Lawrence, and Tucker, contended that the sole right of
originating money bills belonged to the House; in the Senate in 1833
(Twenty-second Congress, Debates, Vol. IX, Pt. 1, pp. 462, 473, 477,
478, 722), where the tariff bill introduced by Mr. Clay was discussed
and tabled, Messrs. Webster, Clay, Dickerson, and Forsyth denied the
right of the Senate to originate a revenue bill; in the House in 1837
(Twenty-fifth Congress, Debates, Vol. XlV, Pt. 1, pp. 1152-1153, 522),
when a Senate bill authorizing the issue of Treasury notes was, on
September 30, discussed in Committee of the Whole and considered an
invasion of the prerogatives of the House. As a result of the
discussion the Senate bill was laid aside and a House bill on the same
subject passed. This latter bill passed the Senate; in the Senate in
1842-43 (Twenty-eighth Congress), when, from January 19 to May 31,
1843, Mr. McDuffie's bill to revive the compromise tariff of 1833 was
debated and by a vote of yeas 33, nays 4, was decided to be such a bill
as could not originate in the Senate; and in the Senate in 1855
(Thirty-fourth Congress, Globe, January, 1856, pp. 160, 161, 162, 375,
376), where the Senate, in opposition to the influence of Messrs.
Seward and Sumner, originated two general appropriation bills which
were afterwards tabled by the House.
\2\ Second session Forty-second Congress, Senate Report No. 146.
Sec. 1489
The report goes on to examine this contention in the light of English
parliamentary history, which the framers of the Constitution had in
mind when they gave to the Senate the power, not allowed to the House
of Lords, of amending a money bill. The Constitution, in giving the
power to amend, gave it in the fullest sense of the term, so as to
include any amendment which might be in order under the rules of the
Senate. A bill raising revenue might be amended like any other bill.
The report then continues:
In opposition to this conclusion it has been urged that to permit the
Senate to ingraft, by way of amendment, a general tariff bill upon a
bill of the House laying a duty on peanuts, is entirely to disregard
the spirit of the clause of the Constitution before quoted. In reply it
may be said, however, that any other construction of this
constitutional provision would deny to the Senate the power to amend a
House bill laying a duty on peanuts so as to lay a duty upon English
walnuts; that is, would deny to the Senate the power of making to the
bill anything more than mere formal amendments.
The report then goes on to advance the theory that the framers of the
Constitution expected that the Senate would sit in practically
continuous session, and that the provision relating to revenue bills
was to prevent them taking up that subject while the other House was
absent by giving to the other House the origination of such bills.
It is conceded in the report that the Senate can not propose an
amendment raising revenue to any bill coming from the House, but only
to a bill raising revenue. This brings forward the phrase ``raising
revenue.'' The report discusses that phrase as follows:
Suppose the existing law lays a duty of 50 per cent upon iron. A bill
repealing such law, and providing that after a certain day the duty
upon iron shall be only 40 per cent, is still a bill for raising
revenue, because that is the end in contemplation. Less revenue will be
raised than under the former law, still it is intended to raise
revenue, and such a bill could not constitutionally originate in the
Senate, nor could such provisions be ingrafted, by way of amendment, in
the Senate upon any House bill which did not provide for raising--that
is, collecting--revenue. This bill did not provide that the duty on tea
and coffee should be laid at a less rate than formerly, but it provided
simply that hereafter no revenue should be raised or collected upon tea
or coffee. To say that a bill which provides that no revenue shall be
raised is a bill ``for raising revenue'' is simply a contradiction of
terms. * * * To say that a bill which does not provide for raising any
revenue must originate in the House because its operation may affect
the revenue is not only to say what the Constitution does not say, but
is to strip the Senate of jurisdiction it is conceded to possess and
which it has exercised at every session of Congress since the
Constitution was adopted. A bill creating an office and fixing the
salary of the officer affects the Treasury to the extent of such
salary, but is not a bill for raising revenue.
After observing that the Constitution intended to restrict the Senate
as to bills raising revenue, but not as to bills appropriating money,
the report concludes:
Your committee are therefore of opinion that the House bill under
consideration was not a bill for raising revenue within the meaning of
the Constitution; and therefore, while the Senate might have amended it
so as to abolish duties altogether upon other articles, the Senate had
no right to ingraft upon it, as it did in substance, an amendment
providing that revenue should be collected upon other articles, though
at a less rate than previously fixed by law. That amendment would have
become a provision in the act for raising revenue, because revenue at a
certain rate would have been collected by the operation of the act.
It is due, however, to the Senate to say that its departure from the
true principle in this case was owing to a desire to conform to the
views of the House of Representatives, as expressed by the House, in
relation to the Senate bill abolishing the tax upon incomes, and thus
to preserve harmony between the two Houses. But since the House of
Representatives, exalting its prerogative, asserts upon one occasion
what it denies upon another, it has become necessary to review the
question in the light of principle and
Sec. 1490
seek for a solution of the difficulty in conformity with the
Constitution, to which, it is hoped, the House will assent, and to
which it is the duty of the Senate to adhere whether the House shall
assent or dissent.
The report concludes with no recommendation for action. except that
the report be transmitted to the House of Representatives.
1490. In 1874 the House declined to take issue with the Senate over
an amendment of that body authorizing certain Government obligations.
It is for the House and not the Speaker to pass on a question
relating to the constitutional prerogatives of the House.
On April 14, 1874,\1\ the House proceeded to the consideration of the
bill of the Senate (S. 617) to fix the amount of United States notes
and the circulation of national banks, and for other purposes.
The bill in its first section provided ``that the maximum amount of
United States notes is hereby fixed at $400,000,000.'' The second
section provided for the issue of forty-six millions in circulation in
addition to the circulation already allowed the national banks, etc.
Mr. James A. Garfield, of Ohio, made the point of order that the bill
was a charge upon the people, as it provided for issuing a class of
obligations, to pay every one of which obligations was by its very
terms a charge upon the people. Therefore it was a bill which should
not originate in the Senate.
The Speaker \2\ said:
The point, the gentleman from Ohio will observe, is one which the
Chair has never ruled upon, because it is not for the Chair to say what
the Senate of the United States may or may not properly do. On all
points where the House has disagreed from the Senate on matters
affecting its privilege and prerogative it has been by vote of the
House.
Mr. Garfield thereupon moved that the Clerk be instructed to return
the bill to the Senate with the message that the bill did not properly
originate in the Senate. And on this question the yeas were 57 and the
nays 179. So the House declined to agree to the motion.
1491. In 1883 the House raised, but did not press, a question as to
certain Senate amendments relating to the revenue.
A question being raised as to certain revenue amendments of the
Senate, it was held in order to refer the constitutional question to
the House conferees, in case there should be a conference.
It being alleged that the constitutional prerogatives of the House
were invaded by certain Senate amendments to a bill, the question of
privilege was raised before the bill came up for consideration.
It is for the House and not the Speaker to decide whether or not the
constitutional prerogatives of the House have been invaded.
On February 27, 1883,\3\ Mr. Nathaniel J. Hammond, of Georgia, as a
question of privilege, submitted this resolution:
Resolved, That the substitute of the Senate to bill (H. R. 5538)
entitled ``An act to reduce internal-revenue taxation, and for other
purposes,'' under the form of an amendment to the bill of the House
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ First session Forty-third Congress, Journal, p. 800; Record, pp.
3075, 3076.
\2\ James G. Blaine, of Maine, Speaker.
\3\ Second session Forty-seventh Congress, Journal, p. 512; Record,
pp. 3336, 3337.
Sec. 1491
(H. R. 5538) entitled ``An act to reduce internal-revenue taxation,''
containing a general revision and repeal of laws imposing both import
duties and internal taxes, is in conflict with the true intent and
purposes of that clause of the Constitution which requires ``all bills
for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,''
and that therefore said bill so amended do lie upon the table.
And be it further resolved, That the Clerk of the House be, and is
hereby, directed to notify the Senate of the passage of the foregoing
resolution.
The bill (H. R. 5538) was on the Speaker's table, and the House had
agreed to a special order for considering the Senate amendments at a
future time.
Mr. William H. Calkins, of Indiana, made the point of order that Mr.
Hammond's resolution was not in order either to be offered or
considered until the bill to which it referred was brought before the
House for consideration.
After debate, the Speaker \1\ said:
The resolution offered by the gentleman from Georgia is offered by
him for the purpose of raising the question of constitutional
privilege, a question involving the constitutional prerogatives of the
House in the formation of revenue bills. And in practice this has been
always held to be a matter of high privilege. The only question raised
now by the point of order of the gentleman from Indiana is as to the
matter of time of raising the question, and it is suggested that the
bill is not before the House for consideration, and hence that it is
too soon to make the point of order raised by the gentleman from
Georgia. In argument it is said that the House does not know officially
what the bill contains for the purpose of determining this question.
The Chair does not take that view of the matter at all. The bill has
been returned to the House by the official direction of the Senate. It
goes, under the rules of the House, it is true, to the Speaker's table,
but the House has taken notice of it there, has ordered it to be
printed, and it is before the House for its action. It is sufficient to
say that if the matter was under consideration once in the House, under
the rules, in the opinion of the Chair, it would then be too late to
raise this question of constitutional privilege against it, so that the
House must look to the bill to determine that question before it
proceeds to consider it at all. Under the practice, points of order
must be made on bills, amendments, etc., before consideration
commences, or they are waived, and to make such points of order Members
must take notice of the contents of such bill, etc.
If the bill in dispute were brought up before the House and its
consideration entered upon, under the practice of the House, it would
be then too late to raise the question of constitutionality against it.
The Chair thinks this is a matter for the House to determine, and for
the purpose of learning, if the House has not been advised upon the
contents of the bill against which the constitutional question is
raised, the bill can be read, or so much of it as may be necessary, for
the purpose of determining whether it is a bill on which the question
of constitutional privilege can properly be raised. It is not for the
Chair to decide whether the prerogatives of the House have been invaded
or not; it is for the House; and therefore the Chair now thinks that
the resolution of the gentleman from Georgia is in order for
consideration, and so rules.
One word further. It is said the precedents are against the
consideration of such a resolution before the measure is brought before
the House for consideration. The Chair has hastily looked to one or two
instances with reference to similar resolutions, and finds that one of
a similar character was offered by the gentleman from Massachusetts,
Mr. Dawes, in April, 1872, which involved a revenue bill, as this does,
and the resolution was offered and entertained and considered by the
House before the bill was taken up for consideration. * * * Several
cases of a similar character to the one before the House have arisen in
the history of the Congress of the United States, but only enough of
them have been examined to show that the practice has not been uniform.
During consideration of the resolution, Mr. Dudley C. Haskell, of
Kansas, offered the following as a substitute: \2\
Whereas House bill No. 5538, entitled ``An act to reduce internal-
revenue taxation, and for other purposes,'' under the form of an
amendment in the Senate to Title 33 of the Revised Statutes, which
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\1\ J. Warren Keifer, of Ohio, Speaker.
\2\ Journal, p. 513; Record, pp. 3340-3344.
Sec. 1491
provides for duties on imports, has been so modified and changed by the
introduction of new provisions, containing, among other things, a
general revision of the statutes referred to so as both to increase and
reduce duties on imports, and in many instances to repeal and in others
to amend the laws imposing import duties; and,
Whereas in the opinion of this House it is believed that such changes
and alterations are in conflict with the true intent and purpose of the
Constitution, which requires that all bills for raising revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives: Therefore,
Resolve, That, if this bill shall be referred to a committee of
conference, it shall be the duty of the conferees on the part of the
House on said committee to consider fully the constitutional objections
to said bill as amended by the Senate and herein referred to, and to
bring the same, together with the opinion of the House in regard
thereto, before said committee of conference, and if necessary, in
their opinion, after having conferred with the Senate conferees, said
conferees on said committee may make report to the House in regard to
the objections to the said bill herein referred to.
Mr. John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, made the point of order against
the proposed substitute, for the reason that it not only proposed to
submit the question of constitutional privilege of the House to such
conference, but also to consider the subject-matter of such Senate
amendment.
During the debate which followed, other points were urged: By Mr.
Nathaniel J. Hammond, of Georgia, that the proposition was to instruct
conferees in advance of a disagreement and in advance of a declaration
by the House that its privileges had been violated; by Mr. Joseph S. C.
Blackburn, of Kentucky, that it was proposed to give to the committee
of conference a double power and duty, relating both to the
constitutional prerogative and to the bill; by Mr. Edward S. Bragg, of
Wisconsin, that it was not in order to refer an undisputed question of
privilege to a committee composed in part of Members of the other
branch.
The Speaker said:
The Chair may say in answer, so far as it is necessary to answer the
question made by the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. Bragg, and it is
necessary to do it only so far as affects this question, that it is
quite competent on presenting a matter which is clearly in opposition
to the action of the Senate, and in the first instance, to declare a
disagreement and ask for a conference.
The Chair is perfectly well satisfied that the proposed substitute
would not be in order if it undertook to do anything more in the first
instance than to provide for a disagreement with the Senate on the
constitutional right of the House or of the two Houses, and then to
refer that disagreement and other subjects connected with the bill to a
committee of conference.
Committees of conference are not appointed, as has been suggested, by
virtue of joint rules of the two Houses, because, as the Chair
understands, there have been no joint rules of the two Houses
recognized by either House for a number of years. Committees of
conference have grown up in practice; either House may ask a conference
on any matter of disagreement. The Chair does not think that upon a
matter about which there is no disagreement, and none proposed by the
action of the House with the Senate, a conference could properly be
asked for. Nor does the Chair think that under the guise of providing
for a conference other rules of the House may be overridden. If this
resolution is subject to the construction that it sends the bill to the
conference committee, in case the Senate should agree to it, then it
would have to be held that under the right to provide for a committee
of conference we could override our rules in reference to the manner of
proceeding to business on the Speaker's table, and we could override
Rule XX,\1\ which requires that a Senate amendment to a revenue or
appropriation bill shall be first considered in Committee of the Whole
on the state of the Union, and, without declaring a disagreement in the
Senate amendment, send it directly to a committee of conference. If
this proposed substitute would do that, the Chair would hold it to be
not in order.
But before coming to consider what the plain meaning of the language
is, the Chair desires to call attention to the precedent, as it is
claimed, which arose in March, 1859. On an examination of that
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\1\ See section 4796 of Vol. IV of this work.
Sec. 1492
case, which involved the constitutional right of the Senate to
originate a post-office appropriation bill,\1\ it will be found that a
resolution very similar, certainly in effect, to the proposed
substitute was adopted in the House by a very large vote, and a
conference was agreed to by the Senate. The conferees on the part of
the two Houses met and considered only, as the Globe of that time will
show, the question of constitutional difference between the two Houses,
and reported upon that. Without undertaking to settle the question one
way or the other, the conference committee made a report declaring in
effect that neither House receded from its position on the subject, and
then, as it was the day before the expiration of the Congress,
recommended in the latter clause of the report that each House should
waive any constitutional right which they respectively considered to
belong to them and that the House should pass the bill which was
brought to the House.
The history of those proceedings shows, however, that after this bill
was brought to the House it was not treated at all as a bill brought
there by the conference committee. Mr. Letcher, of Virginia, a member
of the conference committee on the part of the House, after the report
was received and before it was acted upon, obtained unanimous consent
to introduce the precise bill which was recommended by the committee of
conference. It was introduced by unanimous consent, read a first and
second time as an original bill, and subsequently that bill passed as a
House bill upon a suspension of the rules. It was not treated as any
matter offered to the House properly by the committee of conference.
The committee of conference certainly transcended to some extent its
duties by recommending the House to take up a bill, that subject not
having been referred to the committee; but it was a mode of getting out
of the difficulty and saving an appropriation bill in the expiring
hours of Congress. Thus in this particular case we find a precedent
only for a resolution of the House referring the constitutional
question to a committee of conference, the House having first declared
its opinion that the Senate had not the right to originate the
particular bill.
Now, a fair reading of this proposed substitute leads the Chair to
hold that it provides only for referring to a conference committee the
constitutional objections to the bill, such as grow out of the alleged
violation of the Constitution by the Senate of the United States in
passing an impost bill as a part of or an amendment to an internal
revenue bill of the House. The second clause of the preamble clearly
provides for a disagreement with the Senate upon this constitutional
question. The Chair, giving this substitute the construction it has
indicated, holds that the substitute is in order, and therefore
overrules the point of order made by the gentle-an from Kentucky.
Mr. Hammond, of Georgia, having appealed, the appeal was laid on the
table on motion of Mr. Thomas B. Reed, of Maine.
The substitute was adopted \2\--yeas 144, nays 120--and then the
resolution as amended by the substitute was agreed to-yeas 139, nays
122.
When the conferees reported on the bill no mention of the
constitutional question was made in the report,\3\ and the bill with
the Senate amendments became a law.
1492. Instance wherein a Senate amendment affecting the revenue was
not objected to until the stage of conference.--On March 1, 1905,\4\ in
the Senate, the post-office appropriation bill was under consideration,
when this amendment was agreed to without any debate as to whether or
not it affected the revenue:
Sec. 3 [2]. That hereafter the rate of postage on packages of books
or merchandise mailed at the distributing post-office of any rural free
delivery to a patron on said route shall be 3 cents for each pound or
any fraction thereof. This rate shall apply only to packages deposited
at the local post-office for delivery to patrons on routes emanating
from that office, or collected by rural carriers for delivery to the
office from which the route emanates, and not to mail transmitted from
one office to another, and shall not apply to packages exceeding 5
pounds in weight.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ This is hardly accurate. The Senate had placed on the post-office
appropriation bill passed by the House an amendment raising the rate of
postage. See section 1485 of this chapter.
\2\ Journal, pp. 513, 515; Record, pp. 3349, 3350.
\3\ Journal, p. 568; Record, p. 3710.
\4\ Third session Fifty-eighth Congress, Record, p. 3733.
Sec. 1493
On the same day,\1\ the bill having been received in the House, all
the amendments of the Senate were disagreed to,\2\ and a conference was
asked, Messrs. Jesse Overstreet, of Indiana, John J. Gardner, of New
Jersey, and John A. Moon, of Tennessee, being conferees.
On March 1 \3\ the Senate agreed to the conference.
On March 3 \4\ the conference report was presented and agreed to,
with the above amendment of the Senate disagreed to.
1493. The Senate having added a revenue amendment to an appropriation
bill, the House returned the bill to the Senate, which reconsidered and
struck out the amendment.--On February 16, 1905,\5\ Mr. Sereno E.
Payne, of New York, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, rising to
a question of privilege, offered for immediate consideration the
following:
Resolved, That the amendment No. 208, added by the Senate to the
House bill H. R. 18329, in the opinion of this House contravenes the
first clause of the seventh section of the first article of the
Constitution of the United States, and is an infringement of the
privileges of this House, and that the said bill, with the amendments,
be respectfully returned to the Senate with a message communicating
this resolution.
Mr. Payne said:
Mr. Speaker, the bill in question is the annual agricultural
appropriation bill. The amendment is in these words:
``That paragraph 234 of the act of July 24, 1897, entitled `An act to
provide revenue for the Government and encourage the industries of the
United States,' shall not be held to be affected by the provisions of
section 30 of said act.''
Paragraph 234 of the tariff bill referred to provides for a duty of
25 cents a bushel on wheat imported into the United States. Section 30
provides for a drawback of 99 per cent of the tariff paid on imported
articles which enter into the manufacture of articles afterwards
exported from the United States. In other words, the amendment
abolishes the drawback clause in the Dingley bill on wheat imported
into the United States and afterwards manufactured into flour and
exported.
Now, I do not intend to discuss at all the merits of this amendment.
Whether it is wise or otherwise is a question not to be considered. The
important question is whether that clause of the Constitution of the
United States which declares that all bills for raising revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives shall be cherished as one of
the privileges handed down to us by the Constitution of the United
States, and whether we will resent any infringement from any source of
that clause of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause.] Mr.
Speaker, as the Members know, this is no new question in the House of
Representatives, and the House has uniformly insisted on its right
guaranteed to it by this clause of the Constitution of the United
States, and the Senate has frequently conceded it. In 1831, February
11, in the Senate, Mr. Thomas H. Benton asked leave to introduce a bill
for the gradual abolition of the duty on alum salt. This bill was
opposed on two grounds, the latter ground because it belonged to a claw
of revenue bills which the Senate did not have the right to originate.
After debate, leave to introduce the bill was refused--yeas 17, nays
27--and in that case the Senate affirmed the right of the House.
On June 30, 1864, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens introduced a resolution, and
the resolution which I have offered to-day is substantially a copy of
the one introduced by Mr. Stevens, in regard to the bill to regulate
and provide for enrolling and calling out of the national forces, which
had been returned from
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Record, p. 3808.
\2\ The constitutional question was not raised in the House because
of lack of time, and because of the belief that under the circumstances
it would be better to give the Senate conferees an opportunity to
recede.
\3\ Record, p. 3757.
\4\ Record, pp. 3979-3982.
\5\ Third session Fifty-eighth Congress, Record, pp. 2730-2736.
Sec. 1493
the Senate with amendments, one of which provided for a 5 per cent duty
on all incomes to meet the cost of paying bounties and enforcing the
draft. Mr. Stevens said:
``It is so clearly a violation of the privilege of the House that I
think it ought not for a moment to be acquiesced in.''
Without further debate the House agreed to the resolution. The same
day a message from the Senate announced that the Senate, on
reconsideration, had again passed the bill with all amendments
previously concurred in, except the amendment objected to by the House
of Representatives.
In April, 1872, Mr. Dawes, of Massachusetts, reported a resolution in
substance as follows:
``Resolved, That the substitution by the Senate, under the form of an
amendment, for the bill of the House (H. R. 1537) entitled `An act to
repeal existing duties on tea and coffee' of a bill entitled `An act to
reduce existing taxes,' containing a general revision, reduction, and
repeal of laws imposing import duties and internal taxes, is in
conflict with the true intent and purpose of that clause of the
Constitution which requires that all bills for raising revenue shall
originate in the House of Representatives, and that therefore said
substitute for House bill No. 1537 do lie upon the table--``and also
directing the Clerk to notify the Senate of the passage of the
resolution.
The House will notice that the original bill sent from the House of
Representatives provided for the abolition of the duty on tea and
coffee. It was a bill in relation to the revenue; but the House
believed that it was not a bill raising revenue in the sense expressed
by the Constitution of the United States, and therefore that the
Senate, under their general power of amendment to bills raising
revenues, could not incorporate a general tariff bill as a substitute
for this bill of the House. This resolution gave rise to an important
debate, in which any gentlemen indulged, some of whom have since become
Senators and now are in the Senate of the United States, and all of
whom took grounds that this bill was an infringement of the
constitutional right of the House. Mr. James A. Garfield reviewed the
English usage, the circumstances attending the adoption of the clause
in the Constitution of the United States, and cited many precedents of
Congress. For instance, in the House on June 25, 1789 (First Congress,
Annals, vol. 1, pp. 592, 593, 597, 603, 605, 607), the First Congress,
Madison, Livermore, Gerry, Lawrence, and Tucker contended that the sole
right of originating money bills belonged in the House--this was on an
appropriation bill--but that this clause covered also all appropriation
bills, because an appropriation bill was an appropriation of the moneys
raised by the revenue powers of the Government, and therefore was
included; and since that time, as we all know, the appropriation bills
of the Government--the supply bills--have originated uniformly in the
House of Representatives, with perhaps a single exception, which I will
note later, and which failed to become law.
Also in the Senate in 1833 (Twenty-second Congress, Debates, vol. 9,
pt. 1, pp. 462, 473, 477, 478, 722), where the tariff bill introduced
by Mr. Clay was discussed and tabled, Messrs. Webster, Clay, Dickerson,
and Forsythe denied the right of the Senate to originate a revenue
bill. In the House in 1837 (Twenty-seventh Congress, Debates, vol. 14,
pt. 1, pp. 1152, 1153, 522), where a Senate bill authorizing the issue
of Treasury notes was, on September 30, discussed in Committee of the
Whole and considered an invasion of the prerogatives of the House. As a
result of the discussion, the Senate bill was laid aside and a House
bill on the game subject passed. This latter bill passed the Senate. In
the Senate in 1842-3 (Twenty-eighth Congress) where, on January 19 to
May 31, 1843, Mr. McDuffie's bill to revise the compromise tariff of
1833 was debated and by a vote of yeas 33, nays 4, was decided to be
such a bill as could not originate in the Senate. In the Senate in 1855
(Thirty-fourth Congress, Globe, January, 1856, pp. 160, 161, 162, 375,
376), where the Senate, in opposition to the influence of Messrs.
Seward and Sumner, originated two general appropriation bills, which
were afterwards tabled by the House.
The resolution was agreed to by a vote of yeas 163, nays 9. The
resolution was referred to the Committee on Privileges and Elections,
and an exhaustive report was made by Mr. Matthew H. Carpenter, of
Wisconsin. The following is the concluding clause of the report:
``Your committee are therefore of opinion that the House bill under
consideration was not a bill for raising revenue within the meaning of
the Constitution; and, therefore, while the Senate might have amended
it so as to abolish duties altogether upon other articles, the Senate
had no right to engraft upon it, as it did in substance, an amendment
providing that revenue should be collected upon other articles, though
at a less rate than previously fixed by law. That amendment would have
become a provision in the act for raising revenue, because revenue at a
certain rate would have been collected by the operation of the act.''
Sec. 1493
On June 14, 1878, Mr. Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois, as a question of
privilege, offered a resolution returning a bill to establish post
routes, originating in the House of Representatives, reciting:
``That the amendments thereto be returned to the Senate, as a portion
of said amendments are in the nature of and constitute a revenue
bill.''
The amendments complained of gave the franking privilege to Members
of Congress, reduced the rate on second-class mail from 3 to 2 cents a
pound, adding a provision for a tax of $1 upon the publisher of a
foreign newspaper before he should be permitted to use the mails to
send his paper at the 2-cent rate, etc. Another provision relieved the
railroads of certain duties in regard to delivering the mails. The
resolution was agreed to, yeas 169, nays 68. The Senate appointed a
committee of conference to confer with a like committee on the part of
the House touching the matters of difference between the two Houses
indicated by said House resolution. The House appointed a like
committee and each committee reported to their respective Houses that
they were unable to agree. The attempt to reconcile the two Houses
failed and the bill failed. The House subsequently passed a bill
without the objectionable amendments, and that was not passed in the
Senate.
On March 3, 1859, Mr. Galusha A. Grow introduced a similar resolution
in regard to the post-office appropriation bill, that the same be
returned to the Senate, as section 13 of said amendments is in the
nature of a revenue measure. That resolution was agreed to in the House
and the bill finally failed. Similar action was taken January 27, 1871,
in the House, on motion of Mr. Samuel Hooper, of Massachusetts. * * *
Mr. Allison was then a Member of the House. On February 23, 1830, in
the Senate, Mr. Thomas H. Benton proposed a bill to provide for the
abolition of unnecessary duties, etc. One section of this bill proposed
to increase the duties on certain articles, and the question arose as
to the constitutional power of the Senate to originate such a measure.
After discussion, Mr. Benton withdrew the bill.
There was also a report made in the Forty-eighth Congress by Mr.
Randolph Tucker, of Virginia, on the question of changing revenues
under the treaty-making, power of the Constitution. It was a lengthy,
able, and exhaustive report, written by one of the ablest lawyers whom
it has been my privilege to meet during my service in this House, and
it showed most conclusively the exclusive power of the House of
Representatives to originate revenue bills. I believe that in all the
history of the treaty-making of the United States, a question in
respect to or touching upon the question of revenue, or where
appropriation has been required to carry out the effect of the treaty,
it has been the uniform practice, with a single exception, to submit
those treaties and those matters to the House of Representatives; and
the treaties have not gone into effect until the House of
Representatives have joined in the proper legislation to change the
revenue or to make the appropriation.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I might cite other precedents. They are numerous,
and they are all to the same effect. Our predecessors have held
inviolate the right of the House of Representatives to originate
revenue bills. It is guaranteed to us by the Constitution. It is higher
than any question that can arise in regard to tariff or to tariff
change. It is higher than a question of duty on wheat or duty on any
other of the four thousand articles that are covered by a revenue
measure. It is the sacred right left us by the framers of the
Constitution as representing the people, as coming from the body of the
people, and as being nearer to the people than the other body, to
originate these bills, and none of them can be originated and none
should be originated, and none will be originated in the other body if
the House of Representatives stand by their right and by their
privileges as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
After further debate the resolution was agreed to, yeas 263, nays 5.
On February 17,\1\ in the Senate, the message from the House was
considered.
Mr. Henry C. Hansbrough, of North Dakota, said:
Here, Mr. President, is another question that has never been
judicially determined. In the only case that I am able to find which
reached the Supreme Court touching the power granted by section 7,
Article I, of the Constitution, the court say:
``The case is not one that requires either an extended examination of
precedents or a full discussion as to the meaning of the words in the
Constitution--`bills for raising revenue.' What bills belong to that
class is a question of such magnitude and importance that it is the
part of wisdom not to attempt by any general statement to cover every
possible phase of the subject.'' (167 U. S., 202.)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Record, pp. 2766-2770.
Sec. 1493
Mr. Joseph B. Foraker, of Ohio, said:
I do not believe the position taken by the House in this matter is a
correct one. That is to say, I do not believe the constitutional
provision that bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House
precludes the Senate from originating measures that merely affect the
revenue, certainly when they affect reductions in the revenue, or when
they affect, as here, the revenue only by providing for a construction
of a law that is in force, as I understand this amendment does,
governing the disbursement of revenues already raised by paying out the
same for drawbacks. This is no time, with the pressure we are all
working under, to enter upon a discussion of this very important
subject, but this is a question that will arise from time to time in
connection with the questions that are arising about tariff between
this country and our insular possessions, and sooner or later we must
discuss it.
I wish to take advantage of this opportunity to say that I assent
because of the peculiar conditions surrounding it, but at the proper
time I hope to be able to address the Senate upon the proposition I
have tried to enunciate, namely, that the constitutional provision does
not prohibit us from legislating so as to reduce revenue or to construe
a statute that is in force in the way we proposed by this amendment.
Mr. John T. Morgan, of Alabama, said:
Mr. President, I think that the House in sending this resolution
here, although it is couched in very respectful terms, has entirely
transcended its authority under the Constitution. The House has no
right to return to the Senate a proposition of any kind upon the ground
that the action of the Senate was unconstitutional. It might ask a
conference upon it with great propriety, and have the judgment of both
Houses taken upon the constitutionality of that provision.
I maintain, Mr. President, that the action of the Senate in the
passage of this amendment to the agricultural appropriation bill was
altogether right and constitutional. The House has been in the habit of
sending us bills called ``bills of revenue,'' or ``bills to raise
revenue,'' or ``tariff bills,'' or ``tax bills,'' internal and
external, or ``customs bills,'' accompanied with provisions such as the
one contained herein upon which the objection in this case rested, as
follows ``An act to provide revenue for the Government and to encourage
the industries of the United States.''
That is the title of the act in which we find the provision that it
is now said we are trying to change in an unconstitutional way. The
title of that act indicates very clearly its purposes, being twofold
and, as I contend, entirely distinct. One is to raise revenue and the
other is to encourage industries. When a bill is enacted into law for
that purpose there can be no doubt that two propositions are contained
in it. One is the revenue proposition and the other is the proposition
to encourage industries.
It so happens that the tariff on wheat--25 cents a bushel--is a
revenue measure, and that we have no right to change perhaps by a bill
originating in the Senate. But the corresponding or correlative
proposition of refunding 99 per cent of that tariff, when it is
received upon wheat that is brought in, and the tariff has been paid to
the Government, when it is exported to foreign countries, is simply a
proposition for the encouragement of manufactures. That is not a
revenue proposition. It is giving away the revenue after it has been
paid into the Treasury. It gives it back to the miller if he grinds the
wheat bought from a foreign country and imported into the United States
and exports it for sale and for consumption abroad.
Now, there is a distinct proposition which encourages the miller at
the expense of the wheat grower. That is a matter which ought to be
rectified, if it can be done; and the Senate of the United States has
just as much right to act upon that proposition as the House has. We do
not disturb the 25 cents a bushel tariff on wheat. We merely say the
giving back of that 25 cents, or of 99 per cent of it, to the mill
owner is a matter we have a right to deal with. That is the
encouragement of industry, and solely that. You can not say that you
are raising revenue when you give 99 cents out of the dollar back to
anybody as a condition of trade. That feature of the case is not the
raising of revenue; it is the giving away of money from the Treasury of
the United States to encourage manufactures.
Just as long as the House sends us bills that contain these distinct
propositions and so announces in the title of the act itself, I feel
entirely at liberty, under my view of the Constitution of the United
States, to vote upon propositions to strike out so much of the express
provisions of a bill as is intended merely to encourage manufactures
without affecting in the slightest degree the tariffs or the revenues
of the country.
Sec. 1494
Mr. John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin, said:
Mr. President, I wish to say a word, and only a word, about this
matter. I never supposed when the act was passed that the drawback
clause included wheat and some other items. But I can not agree with
the Senator from Alabama, and I do not quite agree with the Senator
from Ohio, although I do not care to enter into a discussion of the
question. I think the clause of the Constitution which says ``all bills
for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives''
uses the word ``raising'' in a generic sense. I do not think it means
simply raising duties. Oftentimes revenue is raised by lowering duties.
I think it means, in a strict sense, affecting revenue. * * *
Concerning revenue. The Constitution does certainly confer upon the
House by that clause an exclusive right, so far as this class of
measures is concerned. Tariff bills can not originate in the Senate.
That is an impossibility.
This is an agricultural appropriation bill. There was not an item in
it which dealt with the revenue, and I think it was entirely without
the right of the Senate to include in it the amendment to which the
House objects. As construed it amounted to free wheat for export.
Whether the Attorney-General has correctly construed the law or not is
a question of opinion. He has construed it one way, as Attorney-General
Olney construed it the other way. Attorney-General Griggs and Attorney-
General Moody construed it differently from the construction placed
upon it by Attorney-General Olney.
It is not the function of Congress to construe acts of Congress. That
is the function of the judicial department of the Government. Congress
and legislatures may pass acts of legislative construction, but they
are operative only to change the law from the passage of the
legislative act of construction; they are not retroactive so as to bind
as to the past.
So this proposition which has passed here absolutely changes the law.
It is not simply a matter of construction, but it says: ``That
paragraph 234 of the act of July 24, 1897, entitled, etc., shall not be
held to be affected by the provisions of section 30 of said act.''
Section 30 being the general drawback section.
I think, Mr. President, the House was not called upon to nonconcur in
the amendment and ask, as in ordinary cases, for a conference. That
would have admitted the right of the Senate to incorporate the
amendment. If the Senate might make this amendment it is difficult to
limit the power of the Senate in incorporating amendments which affect
the revenue. * * * I think the House of Representatives, in a very
respectful and dignified way, has called our attention to a real
invasion of its constitutional privilege and that the Senate is
proceeding to do in a dignified and proper way what it ought to do in
eliminating this amendment from the bill.
On motion of Mr. Spooner the passage and engrossment of the bill was
reconsidered and the objectionable amendment was disagreed to. The bill
was then engrossed, read a third tune, and passed; and then returned to
the House of Representatives.
1494. The Senate having passed a bill with incidental provisions
relating to revenue, the House returned the bill, holding it to be an
invasion of prerogative.
Arguments in the Senate as to the limits of the prerogatives of the
House in relation to revenue legislation.
On December 14, 1905,\1\ in the Senate, Mr. Nelson W. Aldrich, of
Rhode Island, from the Committee on Finance, reported the bill (S.
1475) supplemental to an act entitled ``An act to provide for the
construction of a canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans,'' approved June 28, 1902, and making appropriation for
isthmian canal construction, and for other purposes, with an amendment
striking out all after the enacting clause and inserting the following:
That the 2 per cent bonds of the United States authorized by section
8 of the act entitled ``An act to provide for the construction of a
canal connecting the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,''
approved
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ First session Fifty-ninth Congress, Record, p. 383.
Sec. 1494
June 28, 1902, shall have all the rights and privileges accorded by law
to other 2 per cent bonds of the United States, and every national
banking association having on deposit, as provided by law, such bonds
issued under the provisions of said section 8 of said act approved June
28, 1902, to secure its circulating notes, shall pay to the Treasurer
of the United States, in the months of January and July, a tax of one-
fourth of 1 per cent each half year upon the average amount of such of
its notes in circulation as are based upon the deposit of said 2 per
cent bonds: and such taxes shall be in lieu of existing taxes on its
notes in circulation imposed by section 5214 of the Revised Statutes.
The amendment was agreed to and the bill as amended was passed. The
question as to the right of the Senate to originate revenue legislation
was not introduced in the debate.
On the next day, December 15,\1\ the bill was sent to the House by
message from the Senate, and went to the Speaker's table. Soon
thereafter Mr. Sereno E. Payne, of New York, called attention to the
fact that the revenue provision of the bill constituted an infringement
on the constitutional prerogatives of the House, referred to the
summary of precedents given in the preceding Congress in a similar
case, and proposed the following resolution, which was agreed to
unanimously by the House:
Resolved, That the bill S. 1475, in the opinion of the House,
contravenes the first clause of the seventh section of the first
article of the Constitution, and is an infringement of the privileges
of this House, and that the said bill be taken from the Speaker's table
and be respectfully returned to the Senate with a message communicating
this resolution.
On the same day \2\ the action of the House was transmitted by
message to the Senate.
Before the bill (S. 1475) was reported or acted on by the Senate, the
House had sent to the Senate a bill (H. R. 480) supplemental to an act
entitled ``An act to provide for the construction of a canal connecting
the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans,'' approved June 28,
1902, and making appropriation for isthmian canal construction, and for
other purposes. This House bill had contained, among other provisions,
one similar to the provision of the bill S. 1475. The Senate had
stricken the provision from the House bill, having embodied it in
somewhat different form in their own bill. The House having disagreed
to the Senate amendments to the House bill, the difference was
committed to a conference, who reported on December 19, 1905.\3\ This
conference report, which was agreed to in both Houses on the day of its
presentation, restored the provision originally embodied in the House
bill, but did so not in the original House language, but in the
language of the bill S. 1475.
While the conference report was under consideration in the Senate,
Mr. Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island, said \4\ that, in his opinion,
the bill S. 1475 was not a revenue measure:
The section, as it came from the House, and as it is proposed to be
adopted in the conference report, is an amendment of section 13 of the
refunding act of March, 1900, which originated in the Senate and was
sent to the other House, where it was received and passed without the
constitutional question having been raised. All the provisions of the
refunding act were placed in the bill by the Senate, and to this there
was no objection. Other important measures affecting taxation of banks
have originated in the Senate without protest.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Record, p. 452.
\2\ Record, p. 432.
\3\ Record, pp. 581-585.
\4\ Record, p. 581.
Sec. 1494
Last year, when the isthmian canal bill, so-called, was before the
Senate, a similar provision to that now in controversy was inserted in
that bill at the suggestion of the Finance Committee. That bill went to
the other House and no constitutional objection was raised. By the
rules of the House of Representatives all revenue bills--all bills
relating to or affecting revenue--are referred to the Committee on Ways
and Means. All bills relating to the taxation of national banks have
been uniformly referred to the Committee on Banking and Currency,
showing very dearly that the House itself in its practice has not held
bills of this nature to be revenue bills. In the very last session--and
I suppose I am at liberty to speak of what occurred in that House as
shown by the public records--a bill was introduced by a Member from
Connecticut [Mr. Hill] containing substantially the same provisions
that are now incorporated in this first section. That bill was referred
by the action of the House to the Committee on Banking and Currency; it
was reported back by the Committee on Banking and Currency with
additional provisions as to the taxation of national banks; it was
taken up for consideration without a question being raised as to its
charter; taken up without any claim that it was entitled to the
privileges of a revenue bill; and it was discussed for weeks. No point
was ever raised as to the jurisdiction of the Committee on Banking and
Currency, nor was there any claim or suggestion on the part of anybody
that the bill was a revenue bill. The claim is now made for the first
time that the prerogatives of the House are invaded by legislation of
this kind.
Mr. John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin, argued \1\ more elaborately in the
same line:
If the House of Representatives is correct in its view that the bill
is a bill ``for raising revenue,'' within the meaning of section 7 of
Article I of the Constitution, certainly the bill is properly returned
and must rest here. If the House of Representatives is wrong, the
Senate has no right to yield its jurisdiction. No department of the
government has any right to surrender any portion of the power or
responsibility with which the Constitution has clothed it. It is vital,
both as to the National Government and to the State governments, that
the line of demarcation drawn by the framers of the Constitution of the
United States and of the various States between the three independent
and coordinate branches of the Government shall be observed always with
the utmost strictness, to the end that neither shall, in the slightest
degree, invade the other. * * * Assertion was made in the House, in
advocacy of the resolution for the return of the bill, that at the last
session the Senate invaded the prerogative of the House and upon its
being resented had receded. In my judgment, at the last session of
Congress the Senate transcended its rights under the Constitution and
invaded the prerogative of the House. That was in the amendment to the
agricultural appropriation bill by which the Senate enacted a
construction of the tariff act in its relation to drawbacks. The
Secretary of the Treasury had construed the drawback clause as
including wheat and was admitting it free of duty. That was a question
of construction. The Senate adopted an amendment to the appropriation
bill declaring the drawback provisions not to include wheat.
It is not the function of legislatures to construe the laws. That is
a judicial function. It may be persuasive in the court, but it is not
binding upon the court; and where such an act is passed and the court
is of opinion, as to past transactions, that the legislative
construction is not the sound one, it stands by the judicial
construction, but from the passage of the construing act it works a
change in the law. Therefore the House rightly objected, in my opinion,
to the amendment by the Senate to the tariff act, and the Senate did
only its duty in receding from the proposition. But there is no
similarity whatever between that amendment and the action here
complained of.
But, Mr. President, if the House of Representatives, 357 of whose
Members voted for this resolution challenging the power of the Senate-
rising to make it more solemn--is right, then the Senate is deprived of
a legislative jurisdiction which from the foundation of the Government
it has exercised, and it is weakened in its legislative power to the
detriment of the public interest. Now a word as to the obvious purpose
of the bill which has been returned unconsidered. I apprehend that very
few will be found to characterize it as a ``tax bill.'' Certainly from
a constitutional standpoint it is not a ``bill for raising revenue.''
What is its manifest object?
Under existing law the 2 per cent canal bonds heretofore authorized
could, when issued, be used as a basis for national-bank circulation.
Under existing law the tax upon that circulation would be 1 per cent.
The law which is made by this bill to apply to the canal bonds relates
to 2 per cent bonds, and
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Record, pp. 581-584.
Sec. 1494
to encourage their purpose and use as a basis for bank circulation
reduces the tax from 1 per cent to one-half of 1 per cent. So the bill
which was returned to us was simply a bill bringing these 2 per cent
canal bonds upon the same basis in respect of taxation with all 2 per
cent bonds of the Government.
Is it possible, Mr. President, that it can with reason be said that
the object of this bill is to ``raise revenue'' for the support of the
Government?
The question is this: Is the bill, which was introduced as a separate
proposition by the Senator from Colorado [Mr. Teller], and which the
Senate passed, a revenue bill within the meaning of section 7 of the
first article of the Constitution?
``All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of
Representatives.''
This brings us to the question: What is a ``revenue bill'' within the
meaning of the Constitution?
The definition is well settled, thus:
``Revenue laws: Laws made for the direct and avowed purpose of
creating and securing revenue or public funds for the service of the
Government.'' (Anderson's Law Dictionary, p. 899.)
This embraces clearly all bills passed in the exercise of the taxing
power, whether in the form of customs duties or internal-revenue
taxation, for the purpose of raising money for the support of the
Government.
This definition excludes, and the constitutional provision was
intended to exclude, bills passed in the exercise of constitutional
powers other than the taxing power, even if they operated to raise
revenue, or even if they imposed incidentally a tax or taxes to secure
the more efficient and successful exercise of the power.
Such bills or laws have never been, either in practice or judicially,
deemed ``revenue'' bills or laws.
Congress enacts laws from time to time which operate to raise
revenue. The post-office laws operate to raise revenue. Congress
frequently changes the post-office laws so as to raise more revenue.
But it has not been contended for many years--it was once--that those
were revenue bills within the meaning of this clause of the
Constitution.
The power to create national banks is a power which exists in
Congress. It is not the sole prerogative of either House. It is not the
taxing power. It is legislation which Congress may enact under the
money power; and the Supreme Court of the United States has so decided.
The taxation imposed from the beginning upon the circulation of
national banks is purely incidental to the exercise by the Congress, in
creating national banks, in supplying the people with the circulation
of national banks, of a distinct power vested by the Constitution in
either House. * * *
Mr. President, the definition of ``revenue laws'' which I read to the
Senate is taken from Mr. Justice Story (see United States v. Mayo, 1
Gall, 398, and Story on Constitution, sec. 880), and the Supreme Court,
in the case of United States v. Norton, 91 United States, 568, had
occasion to consider carefully the question as to what is meant by the
phrase ``revenue bill,'' or what the word ``revenue'' as used in
section 7 of Article 1 of the Constitution means. This was a post-
office money-order case. It was a criminal case, but the court was
obliged in deciding it to pass upon the question whether it was a
``revenue law'' or not, because, as it determined that it was or that
it was not, the law, it was claimed, would be valid or invalid. They
say:
``In no just view, we think, can the statute in question be deemed a
revenue law.
``The lexical definition of the term `revenue' is very comprehensive.
It is thus given by Webster: `The income of a nation, derived from its
taxes, duties, or other sources, for the payment of the national
expenses.'
``The phrase `other sources' would include the proceeds of the public
lands, those arising from the sale of public securities, the receipts
of the Patent Office in excess of its expenditures, and those of the
Post-Office Department, when there should be such excess, as there was
for a time in the early history of the Government. Indeed the phrase
would apply in all cases of such excess. In some of them the result
might fluctuate, there being excess at one time and deficiency at
another.
``It is a matter of common knowledge that the appellative `revenue
laws' is never applied to the statutes involved in these classes of
cases.
``The Constitution of the United States, Article 1, section 7,
provides that `all bills for raising revenue shall originate in the
House of Representatives.'
``The construction of this limitation is practically well settled by
the uniform action of Congress. According to that construction it `has
been confined to bills to levy taxes in the strict sense of the words,
and has not been understood to extend to bills for other purposes which
incidentally create revenue.'
Sec. 1494
(Story on the Constitution, sec. 880.) `Bills for raising revenue' when
enacted into laws become revenue laws. Congress was a constitutional
body sitting under the Constitution. It was, of course, familiar with
the phrase 'bills for raising revenue' as used in that instrument and
the construction which had been given it.
``The precise question before us''--
That is, as to what was meant by a ``revenue bill'' under this clause
of the Constitution--``came under the consideration of Mr. Justice
Story, in the United States v. Mayo (1 Gall., 396). He held that the
phrase `revenue laws,' as used in the act of 1804, meant such laws `as
are made for the direct and avowed purpose of creating revenue or
public funds for the service of the Government.' The same doctrine was
reaffirmed by that eminent judge in the United States v. Cushman,
426.''
These views commend themselves to our judgment.
Here is an interesting and original discussion of the question, and I
will take but a moment with it before I bring to the attention of the
Senate a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States declaring
this very section involved between the Senate and the House not to be a
revenue bill within that clause of the Constitution invoked by the
House. I read from the case of the United States on the relation of
Oran C. Michels v. Thomas L. James, postmaster of the city of New York,
13 Blatchford's Circuit Court Reports, 207. After quoting the clause,
``All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of
Representatives,'' the court says:
``Certain legislative measures are unmistakably bills for raising
revenue. These impose taxes upon the people, either directly or
indirectly, or lay duties, imposts, or excises for the use of the
Government, and give to the persons from whom the money is exacted no
equivalent in return, unless in the enjoyment, in common with the rest
of the citizens, of the benefit of good government.''
That is a well thought out distinction and definition.
``It is this feature which characterizes bills for raising
revenue''--
Taxes levied throughout the United States upon all coming within the
purview of the act to raise revenue for the general uses of the
Government and all of the people--
``It is this feature which characterizes bills for raising revenue.
They draw money from the citizen; they give no direct equivalent in
return. In respect to such bills it was reasonable that the immediate
representatives of the taxpayers should alone have the power to
originate them. Their immediateresponsibility to their constituents and
their jealous regard for the pecuniary interests of the people, it was
supposed, would render them especially watchful in the protection of
those whom they represented. But the reason fails in respect to bills
of a different class. A bill regulating postal rates for postal service
provides an equivalent for the money which the citizen may choose
voluntarily to pay. He gets the fixed service for the fixed rate, or he
lets it alone, as he pleases and as his own interests dictate. Revenue,
beyond its cost, may or may not be derived from the service and the pay
received for it, but it is only a very strained construction which
would regard a bill establishing rates of postage as a bill for raising
revenue, within the meaning of the Constitution. This broad distinction
existing in fact between the two kinds of bills, it is obviously a just
construction to confine the terms of the Constitution to the case which
they plainly designate. To strain those terms beyond their primary and
obvious meaning, and thus to introduce a precedent for that sort of
construction, would work a great public mischief. Mr. Justice Story, in
his Commentaries on the Constitution (sec. 880), puts the same
construction upon the language in question, and gives his reasons for
the views he sustains, which are able and convincing. In Tucker's
Blackstone only, so far as authorities have been referred to, is found
the opinion that a bill for establishing the post-office operates as a
revenue law. But this opinion, although put forth at an early day, has
never obtained any general approval; but both legislative practice and
general consent have concurred in the other view.''
Mr. President, I now ask the attention of the Senate to the case of
Twin City Bank v. Nebeker, 167 U.S., 196, which is upon the precise
question, and is unanimous and conclusive. I will take the time to read
a portion of the statement of the case in order that Senators may see
how controlling is the decision. In this case the plaintiff bank
brought suit against Nebeker, then Treasurer of the United States, ``to
recover from the defendant in error the sum of $73.08, alleged to have
been paid by the former under protest to the latter, who was at the
time Treasurer of the United States, in order to procure the release of
certain bonds, the property of the bank, which bonds, the declaration
alleged, were illegally and wrongfully withheld from the plaintiff by
the defendant. The plaintiff went into liquidation''--that is, the
bank--``in the manner provided by law, on the 23d of June, 1891, and on
the 25th of August,
Sec. 1494
1891, deposited in the Treasury of the United States lawful money to
redeem its outstanding notes, as required by section 5222 of the
Revised Statutes of the United States. After making such deposit the
bank demanded the bonds which had been deposited by it to secure its
circulating notes, and of which defendant had possession as Treasurer
of the United States. The defendant refused to deliver them unless the
bank would make a return of the average amount of its notes in
circulation for the period from January 1, 1891, to the date when the
deposit of money was made--viz, the 25th of August--1891and--pay a tax
thereon. The bank then made a return of the average amount of its notes
in circulation for the period from January 1 to June 30, 1891, and paid
to the defendant $56.25, protesting that he had no authority to demand
the tax, and delivered to him a protest in writing setting forth that,
in making the return and in paying the tax, it did not admit the
validity of the tax or defendant's authority to exact or collect it,
but made the return and payment solely for the purpose of procuring the
possession of the United States bonds belonging to it, which defendant
had refused to release until such return and payment were made, and
further protesting that it was not liable to the tax or any part of it.
The bank's agent then made another demand upon defendant for the bonds;
but he refused to deliver them until a return should be made of the
average amount of its notes in circulation for the period from July 1
to August 25, 1891, and a tax paid thereon. Its agent then delivered
such return to defendant and paid him $16.83, at the same time
delivering a written protest in the same form as the one above
mentioned. These transactions were with the defendant himself, and the
money was paid to him in person.
``The Journals of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the
United States for the first session of the Thirty-eighth Congress were
put in evidence by plaintiff. The bank claim that these Journals show
that the national-bank act originated as a bill in the House of
Representatives; that when it passed the House it contained no
provision for a tax upon the national banks, or upon any corporation,
or upon any individual, or upon any property, nor any provisions
whatever for raising revenue, and that all the provisions that appear
to authorize the Treasurer of the United States to collect any tax on
the circulating notes of national banks originated in the Senate by way
of amendment to the House bill.''
Which is the fact. The court say:
``The provision relating to taxation, which, it is alleged, was
inserted by way of amendment in the Senate, appears as section 5214 of
the Revised Statutes.''
I am told by my friend the Senator from Iowa [Mr. Allison] that that
is the very section involved here.
Mr. Allison. The same section.
Mr. Spooner. The same section.
Now the court says:
``The contention in this case is that the section of the act of June
3, 1864, providing a national currency secured by a pledge of United
States bonds, and for the circulation and redemption thereof, so far as
it imposed a tax upon the average amount of the notes of a national
banking association on circulation was a revenue bill within the clause
of the Constitution declaring that `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' (Article I, section 7);
that it appeared from the official journals of the two Houses of
Congress that while the act of 1864 originated in the House of
Representatives, the provision imposing this tax was not in the bill as
it passed that body, but originated in the Senate by amendment, and
being accepted by the House became a part of the statute; that such tax
was, therefore, unconstitutional and void; and that consequently the
statute did not justify the action of the defendant.''
The question could not, I think, be more clearly presented to the
court than it is upon this statement of fact. The court say:
``The case is not one that requires either an extended examination of
precedents or a full discussion as to the meaning of the words in the
Constitution `bills for raising revenue.' What bills belong to that
class is a question of such magnitude and importance that it is the
part of wisdom not to attempt, by any general statement, to cover every
possible phase of the subject. It is sufficient in the present case to
say that an act of Congress providing a national currency, secured by a
pledge of bonds of the United States, and which, in the furtherance of
that object, and also to meet the expenses attending the execution of
the act, imposed a tax on the notes in circulation of the banking
associations organized under the statute, is clearly not a revenue bill
which the Constitution declares must originate in the House of
Representatives.
``Mr. Justice Story has well said that the practical construction of
the Constitution and the history of the origin of the constitutional
provision in question proves that revenue bills are those that levy
taxes
Sec. 1495
in the strict sense of the word, and are not bills for other purposes
which may incidentally create revenue.'' (1 Story on Constitution, sec.
880.)
That was the language of Mr. Justice Story long ago, incorporated in
this opinion and expressly affirmed, and also in the Ninety-first
United States, by unanimous decision of the Supreme Court. The court
continues:
``The main purpose that Congress had in view was to provide a
national currency based upon United States bonds, and to that end it
was deemed wise to impose the tax in question. The tax was a means for
effectually accomplishing the great object of giving to the people a
currency that would rest primarily upon the honor of the United States
and be available in every part of the country. There was no purpose by
the act or by any of its provisions to raise revenue to be applied in
meeting the expenses or obligations of the Government. ''
Now, Mr. President, I do not intend to take further time. Here is to
be found, under the strongest possible sanction, a definition of the
word ``revenue,'' as used in this constitutional provision, made a
great many years ago by Judge Story, practically adopted by both bodies
ever since, sustained by a number of decisions which I have not stopped
to even note, and lastly sustained in language too plain for dispute by
the Supreme Court of the United States. Nothing can be plainer than
that this bill and kindred. bills do not fall within that definition.
There seem to be no answer to the suggestion of the Senator from
Rhode Island [Mr. Aldrich] that if section 1 as sent to us by the House
of Representatives is a revenue bill within the meaning of section 7 of
article I of the Constitution we have a right under that clause to add
to it a tariff bill or amendments to the internal-revenue law. An
attempt to treat the bill as a revenue bill for such a purpose could
not fail to excite derision.
The conference report was agreed to by the Senate, and later by the
House. No further action was proposed in the Senate at this time on the
question of prerogative.
1495. The Senate having added certain revenue amendments to a non-
revenue House bill, the House ordered the bill to be returned to the
Senate.
The two Houses being at variance over a question of constitutional
prerogative, the differences were submitted to a committee of
conference.
On June 14,1878,\1\ Mr. Joseph G. Cannon, of Illinois, as a question
of privilege, offered the following resolution:
Resolved, That the House bill (No. 4286) to establish post routes in
the several States therein named, with the Senate amendments thereto,
be returned to the Senate, as a part of said amendments are in the
nature of and constitute a revenue bill.
Mr. Cannon specified amendments as follows:
Section 11 gives the franking privilege to all Members of Congress
and certain Department officers, clearly making it a revenue measure in
the contemplation of the Constitution. The case in the Thirty-fifth
Congress was for an increase of postage; this is for decreasing postage
on matter forwarded through the mails. * * *
Sections 12 to 19, inclusive, provide what shall constitute second-
class mail matter. A large portion of it is now by law charged 3 cents
a pound. This provides the whole of it shall go at 2 cents a pound.
The next section provides for a tax of $1 upon every publisher in the
United States before he shall be permitted to use the mail to send his
papers at the 2-cent rate, a provision that is unknown to the law--a
revenue provision. * * *
Again, section 18 allows foreign newspapers to be sent by the
publisher or his agent through the mails at 2 cents a pound. * * *
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Second session Forty-fifth Congress, Journal, p. 1303; Record,
pp. 4606-4613.
Sec. 1495
Again, sections 24 and 25 of this bill provide that an entirely new
class of matter that never was permitted to go through the mails may go
through the mails at 1 cent an ounce, changing the law and reaching out
to gather revenue for the Department; a revenue to go into the
Treasury. * * *
Mr. Cannon also called attention to a section subsidizing steamers,
and another relieving railroads of certain duties in regard to
delivering the mails.
The resolution was debated at length, attention being called to the
fact that the bill, as it passed the House originally and was sent to
the Senate, was neither a revenue bill nor an appropriation bill, but
simply a post routes bill. The Senate, therefore, had not exercised
their constitutional function of amending a revenue bill, but had
originated revenue provisions.
The resolution was agreed to, yeas 169, nays 68.
On the same day, in the Senate,\1\ the resolution of the House was
received and considered. Various propositions were made--one that the
Senate insist on its amendments and ask a conference. But it was
objected that a conference might not take place in this manner when the
House had not acted on the Senate amendments. Finally, Mr. Thomas W.
Ferry, of Michigan, proposed a preamble reciting the circumstances and
the following resolution:
Resolved, That a committee of conference be appointed to confer with
a like committee on the part of the House touching the matters of
difference between the two Houses indicated by said House resolution,
and invite the House to agree to such conference.
It was objected that a conference might not be held except in case of
disagreeing votes, but in reply Jefferson's Manual was quoted to show
that conferences might be asked in cases of difference of opinion.
The resolution and preamble were agreed to by the Senate, and the
action was reported to the House, where, on June 15, the request of the
Senate for a conference was agreed to. The conferees of the two Houses
were Senators T. W. Ferry, of Michigan, S. J. Kirkwood, of Iowa, and S.
B. Maxey, of Texas; Representatives J. G. Cannon, of Illinois, W. R.
Morrison, of Illinois, and A. M. Waddell, of North Carolina.
On June 17 \2\ the conferees submitted written reports to their
respective Houses, stating that they had been unable to agree, and
asking a new committee. The further conference was ordered by both
Houses and the new conferees were appointed, the same ones being
reappointed, except that Senator A. S. Paddock, of Nebraska, took the
place of Mr. Ferry, and Representative John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky,
the place of Mr. Morrison.
On June 18 \3\ the conferees reported as follows:
The committee of conference * * * have met, and after full and free
conference have been unable to agree touching the matter of difference
between the two Houses indicated by said resolution.
The conferees on the part of the Senate propose to waive the
discussion as to the question of privilege at issue between the two
Houses, and to take up the House bill with the Senate amendments
thereto and consider them for the purpose of 1ring a report upon the
several matters embraced therein.
The conferees on the part of the House decline to agree to this
proposition, for the reason that they do not, in their opinion, possess
any power under the resolution of the House to consider the bill or
amendments without an enlargement thereof.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Journal, pp. 1310, 1311, 1334; Record, pp. 4592, 4596, 4680.
\2\ Journal, p. 1394; Record, pp. 4719, 4767.
\3\ Journal, p. 1410; Record, pp. 4787, 4824.
Sec. 1496
The attempt to reconcile the two Houses failed with this conference,
and the bill did not become a law.
The House subsequently passed, under suspension of the rules, a post-
route bill embodying the unobjectionable amendments of the Senate.
1496. In 1889 Senate amendments to a House revenue bill were
questioned in the House as an infringement of the House's privilege.--
On February 15, 1889,\1\ Mr. Roger Q. Mills, of Texas, as a question of
privilege, from the Committee on Ways and Means, to whom was referred
the amendment of the Senate to the bill (H. R. 9051) to reduce taxation
and simplify the laws in relation to the collection of the revenue,
reported the same, accompanied by a report and the following
resolution:
Resolved, That the substitution by the Senate, under the form of an
amendment, for the bill of the House (H. R. 9051), entitled ``An act to
reduce taxation and simplify the laws in relation to the collection of
the revenue,'' of another and different bill, containing a general
revision of the laws imposing impost duties and internal taxes, is in
conflict with the true intent and purpose of section 7, Article I, of
the Constitution, and that said bill and substitute be returned to the
Senate with the respectful suggestion that said section vests in the
House of Representatives the sole power to originate such a measure.
In their report the committee say:
The House bill was passed on the 21st day of July, 1888, and
transmitted to the Senate on the 23d day of the same month. It was
referred to the Committee on Finance on the 25th day of July, and by
that committee reported back to the Senate on the 4th day of October,
1888, with the recommendation that the enacting clause be stricken out
and that an entirely new bill be substituted. The Senate, without
reading the House bill, proceeded to consider the substitute, with
occasional interruptions, until the adjournment of Congress.
When Congress reassembled in December last the consideration of the
substitute was resumed, and on the 22d of January the final vote upon
the measure was taken in the Senate, the House bill having never been
read except by title. The bill of the House contained 67 pages; the
Senate substitute contains of the same print 179 pages; the House bill
embraces certain specified items of our revenue; the Senate substitute
proposes an original revision of our entire revenue system.
The report then goes to discuss the constitutional question, citing
the action of the Senate in 1844 and the precedents of the Forty-first
and Forty-seventh Congresses.
On February 22 Mr. Mills called up the resolution, but the House, by
a vote of yeas 89, nays 144, refused to consider it. The resolution and
the bill do not appear again.
1497. Instances wherein the Senate has acquiesced in the
Constitutional requirement as to revenue bills, while holding to a
broad power of amendment.--On January 5, 1903,\2\ in the Senate, Mr.
Henry Cabot Lodge, of Massachusetts, in the course of debate on a
Senate bill to suspend the duty on coal for a period of ninety days,
said:
It is a bill to suspend for ninety days the duties on coal imported
into the United States. I am perfectly aware, of course, that no such
bill can originate in this body and that this body can take no action
upon such a measure until it comes over to it from the House. I
introduce the bill simply because I desire to call attention here and
elsewhere to the subject, and to ask for it the prompt consideration of
the Senate Committee on Finance.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Second session Fiftieth Congress, Journal, pp. 507, 589; Record,
pp. 1936, 2208; Report No. 4055.
\2\ Second session Fifty-seventh Congress, Record, p. 484.
Sec. 1497
Mr. Charles A. Culberson, of Texas, said:
I desire to say that it seems to me the Senator from Massachusetts,
who has just taken his seat, misconceives the provision of the Federal
Constitution with reference to revenue bills. The Constitution provides
that all bills for ``raising'' revenue must originate in the House of
Representatives, but I do not understand that by that clause the
origination of bills in the Senate which have an entirely opposite
purpose, or, in other words, the purpose of cutting off absolutely
revenue derived from a specific article is prohibited.
On January 8, 1903,\1\ the Senate considered the following
resolution:
Resolved, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to prepare and
report a bill amending ``An act to provide revenue for the Government
and to encourage the industries of the United States,'' approved July
24, 1897, so that the tariff duty shall be removed from anthracite coal
and the same be placed on the free list.
In the course of the debate Mr. Nelson W. Aldrich, of Rhode Island,
said:
The precedents in the Senate and in the House, as well as the
restrictions of the Constitution itself, from my standpoint, preclude
that action. I understand, of course, that the Senator from Missouri
may hold a different view. A different view has been announced by
Senators upon the other side of the Chamber. But I submit to the Senate
that an attempt to afford relief, which, as the Senator says, is
demanded at once, through a method which would only precipitate a
discussion here and elsewhere as to the constitutional rights of the
Senate and as to the constitutional prerogative of the House of
Representatives--a discussion which in its very nature would outlast
the coal famine--is not a practical method of securing results. The
House of Representatives has always affirmed the position to the
contrary, and the Senate has universally yielded, whatever might have
been the individual opinions of Senators as to that contention.
Mr. George F. Hoar, of Massachusetts, after citing the precedent in
the House, when Mr. Hooper, of Massachusetts, submitted a report, said:
The greatest constitutional authority in this country--save Marshall,
as we all agree on both sides--Mr. Webster, declared in the Senate
that, whatever might be the opinion of the Senate on this question, it
was in the nature of the case absolutely clear that it was a matter
which must be settled always by the sole opinion of the House of
Representatives, and that, whatever the Senate might think, the House
was the sole constitutional judge of the extent, meaning, and scope of
that constitutional provision.
A little reflection will show that Mr. Webster was clearly right. We
can not refuse to consider a House bill on such a subject, because we
are bound to consider their bills, and we do not deny that they have
the right to originate them. So, of course, we can not interfere with
their bills. On the other hand, the House has a perfect right to refuse
to consider bills which it regards as bills for raising revenue, when
they come from the Senate, on the constitutional ground that we have
nothing to do with that subject in its origin, and we can not help
ourselves.
So practically the Constitution has tied our hands, and the worst
thing that can happen to the cause of relieving the present distress of
the people by getting free coal, either for a time or permanently, is
what the Senator from Missouri has caused to happen, as far as he can--
that is, the stirring up of a controversy between the two Houses of
Congress.
On January 21 \2\ Mr. John C. Spooner, of Wisconsin, said:
I have a conviction, Mr. President, that it is not in the power of
the constitution of the Senate to originate a bill which increases a
tariff rate, or reduces a tariff rate, or removes a tariff rate; and
for the purpose of securing from the committee a report upon that
subject--and it would be as well for that purpose to secure a report
upon this resolution as any other measure--with the consent of the
Senator from Missouri, I move the reference of the resolution to the
Committee on Finance.
After brief debate the motion of Mr. Spooner was agreed to.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Record, pp. 592, 594.
\2\ Record, p. 1031.
Sec. 1498
1498. On February 17, 1879,\1\ while the Senate was considering a
bill of the House relating solely to the internal revenue, Mr. Stanley
Matthews, of Ohio, proposed an amendment regulating the duty on tea and
coffee. Mr. James B. Beck, of Kentucky, objected that such an
amendment, affecting as it did the tariff, was not proper to a bill
strictly confined to the internal revenue. After debate on the
constitutional question the Senate decided, ayes 22, noes 16, that the
amendment was in order.
1499. In the Forty-seventh Congress \2\ the Senate originated and
passed a bill (S. 22) to provide for the appointment of a commission to
investigate the question of the tariff and internal-revenue laws. After
this bill had been debated in the Senate a bill of identical title (H.
R. 2315) was introduced in the House, and was under debate in the House
when the Senate bill came over. The House continued with its own bill
and passed it.\3\ Then the Senate passed \4\ the House bill and it
became a law.
1500. Discussion by a committee of the House of the constitutional
right of the Senate to originate bills appropriating money from the
Treasury.--On March 11, 1880,\5\ the bill (S. 1157) entitled ``An act
authorizing the Secretary of the Treasury to purchase additional lots
of ground adjoining the new building for the Bureau of Engraving and
Printing'' was reported from the Committee on Public Buildings and
Grounds. A question having arisen as to the clause of the bill making
an appropriation, it was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary \6\
with instructions to inquire into the right of the Senate under the
Constitution to originate bills making appropriations of money
belonging to the Treasury of the United States.
On February 2, 1881, Mr. J. Proctor Knott, of Kentucky, from the
Committee on the Judiciary, submitted a report \7\ recommending the
adoption of this resolution:
Resolved, That the Senate had the constitutional power to originate
the bill referred, and that the power to originate bills appropriating
money from the Treasury of the United States is not exclusive in the
House of Representatives.
The minority of the committee, Messrs. Hurd, House, Ryon, Lapham, and
Williams, filed dissenting views, recommending these resolutions:
Resolved, That the seventh section of article 1 of the Constitution,
which provides that ``All bills for raising revenue shall originate in
the House of Representatives,'' confers exclusive power upon the House
to originate bills appropriating money from the public Treasury.
Resolved, That the Senate bill which has been referred to this
committee be returned to the Senate of the United States with a copy of
these resolutions.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Third session Forty-fifth Congress, Record, pp. 1478-1482.
\2\ First session Forty-seventh Congress, Record, p. 2342.
\3\ Record, p. 3687.
\4\ Record, pp. 3695, 3742.
\5\ Second session Forty-sixth Congress, Record, p. 1484.
\6\ The members of the Committee on the Judiciary were J. Proctor
Knott, of Kentucky; John T. Harris, of Virginia; David B. Culberson, of
Texas; Frank H. Hurd, of Ohio; John F. House, of Tennessee. John W.
Ryon, of Pennsylvania; Hilary A. Herbert, of Alabama; Jeptha D. New, of
Alabama; N. J. Hammond, of Georgia; Elbridge G. Lapham, of New York;
George D. Robinson, of Massachusetts; Thomas B. Reed, of Maine; Wm.
McKinley, of Ohio; Charles G. Williams, of Wisconsin, and Edwin
Willits, of Michigan.
\7\ Report No. 147, third session Forty-sixth Congress.
Sec. 1500
The report and the views of the minority were ordered printed, but no
further action was taken either on them or on the bill in question.\1\
Both the majority and minority submitted exhaustive arguments in
support of their respective positions. The majority contended that if
the words of the Constitution were to be taken in their ordinary
acceptation, it was difficult to conceive how there could possibly be
two opinions, for the distinction between raising revenue and disposing
of it after it had been raised was sufficiently obvious to be
understood by even the commonest capacity. It was true that from the
time the Constitution was framed there had been an impression, more or
less general, that this clause had a much broader signification than
its terms implied. Many, including Mr. Madison, Mr. Webster, and
Justice Storey, had seemed to regard the expression ``bills for raising
revenue'' as synonymous with the term ``money bills.'' The committee
then examines the use of the term ``money bills,'' especially with
reference to the usages of the British Parliament, where money has long
been raised and expended by the same bills. In Massachusetts, where the
constitution provided that ``money bills'' should originate in the
House of Representatives, the supreme court had given the opinion that
this did not preclude the origination of appropriation bills by the
Senate. Both at the time of the formation of our Constitution, as well
as since, the appropriation of the revenue was in England a mere
incident to measures by which it was granted to the Crown and brought
into the exchequer. The House of Commons claimed and exercised the
exclusive right both to raise and appropriate the revenue. With this
example in their minds the framers of our Constitution, had they
intended to confine the origination of appropriation bills to the
House, would have done so in perfectly plain and unequivocal terms. In
the debates on the Constitution the policy of investing the House with
the exclusive privileges of the English Commons in regard to ``money
bills'' was persistently urged, and it was to be assumed that the
refusal to do this was significant of an intention not to give to the
House the exclusive privilege. In the Senate in 1856 the question of
originating some of the general appropriation bills was discussed, and
such bills were framed and sent to the House. These bills were laid on
the table in the House, not because of a contention that the Senate had
transgressed the constitutional privilege of the House, but because
similar bills had already passed the House. The committee decline to
discuss the policy of the principle, but only refer to its strict
constitutional basis.
The minority, in their views, gave six reasons:
1. That the word ``revenue'' meant money received into the Treasury
for public uses, and the words ``raising revenue'' must include bills
appropriating money to the use of the Government, as well as bills
providing for levying and collecting taxes. This was shown from the
English precedents, where the essential act to constitute the money
raised revenue was the grant, without which not one dollar could be
used for the national expenses.
2. The proceedings of the Constitutional Convention showed very
clearly that the term ``revenue'' was intended to be used in its
ordinary sense of appropriating as well as collecting money for uses of
the Government. The committee review these proceedings carefully in
support of this position, and also examine the English
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Third session Forty-sixth Congress, Journal, p. 309; Record, p.
1146.
Sec. 1500
precedents. Incidentally dissent is expressed as to the decision of the
supreme court of Massachusetts.
3. The speeches in the conventions of the different States called for
the consideration of the Constitution; the writings of the friends of
that instrument, published for the purpose of securing its adoption;
the expressions of members of the Constitutional Convention, and the
opinions of the ablest commentators on the Constitution all showed that
the phrase ``bills for raising revenue'' was the equivalent of ``money
bills,'' which in the English Government at the time of the framing of
our Constitution included bills of appropriation. The minority give
citations in support of this.
4. From the time of the first Congress appropriation bills had, with
few exceptions, originated in the House. By unvarying usage all general
appropriation bills had originated in the lower branch of Congress. The
action of the Senate in 1857 [1856] emphasized this rule. The first
appropriation bill provided in its opening section the sources from
which the money should be drawn, and afterwards directed the purposes
to which it should be applied. In one of the first bills for the
imposition of duties it was provided that out of the proceeds a sum of
$600,000 should be set aside annually for the public expenditure, and
in almost every general appropriation bill until 1813 it was declared
that out of that $600,000 the sums set aside for particular purposes
should be paid. These enactments were in manifest analogy to similar
legislation in the British Parliament and show plainly that the early
opinion was universal that the House of Representatives possessed the
same power over money bills which belonged to the House of Commons.
5. The minority cite the terms of the Constitution itself in
confirmation of their view.
6. The immediate representatives of the people should have the
control of the purse, and the power of originating appropriation bills
was a trust which should be retained.\1\
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ On February 8, 1888, during the consideration of the bill (S.
371) to aid in the establishment of common schools, the constitutional
power of appropriation was debated at some length in the Senate. (First
session Fiftieth Congress, Record, pp. 1046-1055.)
On May 15, 1888, the Senate debated the constitutional right of the
House in the origination of appropriation bills, and also the subjects
of amendments to such bills by the Senate. (First session Fiftieth
Congress, Record, pp. 4151-4158.)
On January 7, 1856, during the prolonged contest over the election of
a Speaker in the House, and while the House, from its disorganized
condition, was unable to transact any business, Mr. Richard Brodhead,
jr., of Pennsylvania, presented in the Senate a proposition that the
Committee on Finance be directed to inquire into the expediency of
reporting the appropriation bills, with a view of obtaining a more
speedy action on them than could be obtained by awaiting the action of
the House. After a debate involving to some extent the constitutional
right of the Senate to originate these bills, the resolution was agreed
to. On February 4, Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, from the
Committee on Finance, reported that they had had the resolution under
consideration and had deemed it best for the Senate to instruct them by
the adoption of this resolution:
Resolved, That the Committee on Finance be instructed to prepare and
report such of the general appropriation bills as they may deem
expedient.
On February 7 this resolution was agreed to after a debate on the
constitutional question involved, Mr. William H. Seward, of New York,
making an especially strong plea against departing from the practice
since the foundation of the Government. (First session Thirty-fourth
Congress, Globe, pp. 160, 349, 375.)
But while there has been dispute as to the theory, there has been no
deviation from the practice that the general appropriation bills (as
distinguished from special bills appropriating for single, specific
purposes) originate in the House of Representatives.
Sec. 1501
1501. In 1885 the House, after learned debate, declined to
investigate the power of the Senate to originate bills appropriating
money.
Whenever it is asserted on the floor that the privileges of the House
are invaded, the Speaker entertains the question.
On January 23, 1885,\1\ Mr. Frank H. Hurd, of Ohio, as a question of
privilege, submitted the following:
Whereas certain bills appropriating money from the Treasury of the
United States, originating in the Senate, have passed that body and
have been sent to this House for its concurrence, which are now upon
the Speaker's table, to wit, Senate bill No. 398, entitled ``A bill to
aid in the establishment and temporary support of common schools,'' and
many others; and
Whereas it is asserted that these bills are in violation of the
privilege of this House to exclusively originate bills for raising
revenue: Therefore be it
Resolved, That the Committee on the Judiciary be hereby directed to
inquire into the power of the Senate to originate bills appropriating
money from the Treasury of the United States, and report to this House
at as early a day as practicable.
Mr. J. Frederick C. Talbott, of Maryland, made the point of order
that the resolution did not present a question of privilege.
The Speaker \2\ said that whenever it was asserted on the floor of
the House that the rights or privileges of the House had been invaded
or violated, it was the duty of the Chair to entertain the said
question, at least to the extent of submitting it to the House.
Therefore he overruled the point of order.
The House then proceeded to the consideration of the resolution, Mr.
Hurd offering in its support an elaborate constitutional argument.
After debate, Mr. Albert S. Willis, of Kentucky, moved to lay the
resolution and preamble on the table.
This motion was agreed to, yeas 128, nays 123.
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\1\ Second session Forty-eighth Congress, Journal, pp. 316, 317;
Record, pp. 948-962.
\2\ John G. Carlisle, of Kentucky, Speaker.