Gord wrote:
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This is a straw man. TEFRA was a broad set of taxes and closing of loop holes and amounted to only a fraction compared to the taxes that were reduced. In short much of the revenues that had previously come through income taxes shifted to the TEFRA taxes and increased because of the economic stimulation from the net tax cuts.
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TEFRA
On the date 19 August 1982, a resolution, H. Res. 571, was brought before the House of Representatives for consideration which concerned the unconstitutionality of the methods used in the Senate concerning H.R. 4961, Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act (TEFRA). The resolution stated: Resolved, That the Senate amendments to the bill, H.R. 4961, in the opinion of the House, contravene the first clause of the seventh section of the first article of the Constitution of the United States, and that the action of the conferees on H.R. 4961 and the Senate amendment thereto in agreeing to provisions of the Senate amendment further contravene said constitutional requirement and that the action of the Senate and the action of the conferees is an infringement of the privileges of this House and that the Senate bill with the Senate amendments be respectively returned to the Senate with a message communicating this resolution.
Mr. Rostenkowski then moved to lay the resolution on the table, a move to sidestep the issue and move on with the bill. The resolution was laid on the table.
Representative Henson Moore, speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives concerning another rule on this subject, stated: "Mr. Speaker, I take this time on the rule to point out to my colleagues that, as the chairman of the Rules Committee indicated, this rule waives all points of order. To me this rule is indicative of what has happened in the violating of all principles of legislation all along the way that this bill has followed from the day it began. It started by violating the most important principle, article 1, section 7, clause 1 of the Constitution since this was a revenue-raising bill and it began in the Senate and not in the House, as that provision of the Constitution plainly provides. ...At the time we voted to go straight to conference, the Senate bill was not even in print. Nobody in the House even knew what was in it, but they voted to send it on to conference, putting the stamp of approval on it of the House of Representatives of the United States of America. ...If the Members will check with their offices, the conference report was just delivered this morning. It just got here. It has 400 pages of small print, single spaced, that I doubt any Member of the House will have read by the time he or she is called upon to vote on it this afternoon. Look at this history of the rules we have violated, the rules of law, the rules of legislative procedure, the rules of the House. ...When we tear down the rules that govern our Nation, then who shall protect the people?"
The Constitutional mandate at issue has been termed the "Origination Clause", and is the provision 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. US Const Art 1 Section 7 clause 1
Jonathan Rosenberg, writing for Northwestern University Law Review concerning TEFRA and its unconstitutional passage, noted that Senator Dole, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, was asked why TEFRA did not originate in the House, and replied, "Well, I'll be very honest, because the House didn't want to originate it." Mr. Rosenberg noted: "Representative Rostenkowski, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, admitted during House debates over the constitutionality of TEFRA that "the severe economic distress and volatile political environment at this moment" counselled the House to disregard the mandate of the origination clause in this instance. ...The House's acquiescence to the Senate's usurpation of its power does not render such unconstitutional acts constitutional. The framers intended that the immediate representatives of the people should not be able to dodge their accountability to their constituents when raising the people's taxes. ...In the area of taxation, the political branches do not have unfettered discretion but must follow the mandates of the Constitution... ...Although the framers saw Congress as the principle policy making institution in government, they sought to design a system which would assure the greatest amount of accountability for the consequences of those policy decisions. The origination clause is part of this system of accountability. If Congress is allowed to decide if and when it will follow the origination clause, it will be more likely to "abuse" its legislative authority and, ultimately, will be more likely to become less accountable and responsive to its constituency."
The part of TEFRA that was objectionable to some of the members of the Congress was, as noted in Tax Notes, 10 January, 1983,: "On December 15, 1981, the House passed H.R. 4961, a revenue-reduction bill. The Senate Finance Committee substituted a revenue-raising bill for the House provisions and reported the bill out of committee as the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA)."
Mr. Rosenberg noted that the Supreme Court of the United States had just that year, in another case, stated: "...the choices we discern as having been made in the Constitutional Convention impose burdens on governmental processes that often seem clumsy, inefficient, even unworkable, but those hard choices were consciously made by men who had lived under a form of government that permitted arbitrary governmental acts to go unchecked. There is no support in the Constitution or decisions of this Court for the proposition that the cumbersomeness and delays often encountered in complying with explicit Constitutional standards may be avoided, either by the Congress or by the President."
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