Talk:Public Law 110-343/Archive 1

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Archive 1

Merge

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
closing discussion for now, clearly no support for this action at present. Let's let it go for awhile, things may look different in a few weeks. Ronnotel (talk) 12:18, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

I suggest this page be merged with Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 as it is the bill that became the law.--agr (talk) 13:28, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

H.R. 1424 is the bill that became law. Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is division A, Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 is division B, and Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief is division C.   — C M B J   22:35, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Against the merge for now.
    One difficulty in merging is that the EESA-2008 is only one of three "Acts" composing the bill. The EESA-2008 has not much to do with two other divisions of the bill, Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, and Tax Extenders and the Alternative Minimum Tax Relief Act of 2008.
    -- Yellowdesk (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Support the merge. The EESA-2008 is by far the most important portion of the bill. In addition, it is not ordinarily the case that congressional bills have their own articles separate from the enacted legislation. John M Baker (talk) 22:59, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Actually, it is not so uncommon to have multiple "acts" in one bill. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 23:03, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
True, though I'm not sure of its relevance. Is your thinking that this article would be renamed to the name of the Public Law (once that is available), with links to or summaries of the three divisions/named statutes? While there is a logic to that, my problem is that almost everything people care about deals with Division A, and there is relatively little interest in Divisions B and C. John M Baker (talk) 23:34, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Some parties have expressed interest in divisions B and C, due to allegations of earmarks and pork barrel spending.   — C M B J   01:52, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm willing to withdraw my support, on the assumption that the article will be renamed Public Law 110-XXX (when the number is known) and revised accordingly. John M Baker (talk) 02:10, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - The HR 1424 is more than the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. In any case, there is a problem with the law federal names. HR does not use a common name when it is approved (in this case, includes three Acts, instead of one common name); i.e. Act XXXXXX/2008. --Mac (talk) 07:34, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose - Once a bill is enacted, it's not referred to by the House Resolution number. It gets a Public Law number. This is now Public Law 110-343. Most of the content here could be merged to Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, though. --John Nagle (talk) 17:41, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
  • Oppose, like CMBJ said above, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is division A, Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008 is division B, and Tax Extenders and Alternative Minimum Tax Relief is division C. --Pixelface (talk) 22:01, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Name change

I take it that we are going to rename this article Public Law 110-343; I mentioned this earlier (before we knew the number) and nobody seemed to have any objection. I can do it myself when I get a chance, but if somebody wants to go ahead without waiting, please do so. John M Baker (talk) 03:09, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Report by a "reliable" source on second choice bill

Deleting CNN story reference because it was incorrect. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act was an amendment to HR1424 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.135.99.82 (talk) 04:15, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It was what was reported by a reliable source. -- Kendrick7talk 04:38, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
  • The source fails to support the text, as far as I can tell. Text removed. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 07:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh well, the source was edited. It was there yesterday. This is more comprehensive. -- Kendrick7talk 13:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Hmmm, CNN is now reporting this again, and saying that the bailout was not attached to HR1424 at all, but some other unnamed bill.[1] But it'll change again on my so I'm leaving it alone. -- Kendrick7talk 17:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Can we get a by legislator vote tally on this page or a link to it? I am curious which legislators voted for and against this legislation. 75.41.19.194 (talk) —Preceding undated comment was added at 19:58, 3 October 2008 (UTC).

Tax breaks are not representative

The tax breaks listed under the bill's provisions are only a few of the many amendments to the legislation; if we aren't going to list them all, should we be listing just a few? The full text of the amendments is available on THOMAS: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/R?r110:FLD001:S60386 --dinomite (talk) 19:45, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Fair point, I just copypasta'd the bulleted list originally from the article on the Econ. Act to here. Although: I've seen secondary sources point out several of these specifically, such as the arrows and the auto racing and the rum tax breaks. We shouldn't bother with WP:OR into the primary document but instead rely on secondary sources which present the notability to us (as a tertiary source). I just AGF'd and moved the list over and didn't check the given refs. I'm busy taking mine own advantage of those rum tax breaks right now, but feel free to double check the given refs at your leisure :) (I tell ya though: bicycle commuting alcoholic Native American middle managers of mining companies with a dozen kids into archery who moonlight as key grips and have summer homes in American Samoa are really cleaning up here, amirite?) -- Kendrick7talk 21:04, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Er so what happens to the genetic nondiscrimation act part?

Forgive me, I'm still quite new to the bizzare practice that seems common in the US of adding completely irrelevant pieces of legislation together for a variety of dubious reasons but er, what happens to the genetic nondiscrimnation act part of the bill? Does is just stay the same? Nil Einne (talk) 09:26, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

okay, so how does a bill pass and then suddenly come back. for f#*@s sake, get real.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.211.71.244 (talk • contribs) on 6 October 2008.

Well, in this case, the bill doesn't really "come back." The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act does not appear to be a part of Public Law number 110-343. I know this is confusing.
And the congressional practice - bizarre or not - of putting completely unrelated pieces of proposed legislation together into one Act that is presented to the President for signature is indeed very common in the United States. And "dubiousness", like "beauty," is in the eye of the beholder. There is no constitutional restriction under U.S. law that says that a statute passed by the U.S. Congress must relate to only one "subject" -- whatever that would mean.
For the record, the latest print version (at least, as of Friday, 10 October 2008, about 2:35pm central time) of this Act as published by the United States Government Printing Office is apparently this one: [2].
I haven't read the article completely, so I'm not sure if this is fully covered, but the bill (H.R. 1424) did indeed begin as a tax bill -- the "Paul Wellstone" version of the bill. The basic process was ruled constitutional by the United States Supreme Court over 90 years ago, in Flint v. Stone Tracy Co., where a particular bill started out in Congress as a proposal for one kind of taxation and ending up being enacted as a completely different kind of tax.
Also, contrary to what someone wrote earlier on the talk page, in Congress the abbreviation "H.R." (as in "H.R. 1424") does not stand for "House Resolution". It stands for "House of Representatives Bill" (I know, I know: maybe it should be "H.R.B." instead then, right?). There are such things as different kinds of "house resolutions", though, and there are different abbreviations for resolutions as well. Famspear (talk) 19:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Interesting... our own article doesn't discuss Flint V. Stone in light of the Origination Clause, however I found this PDF. The relevant language seems to be "The amendment was germane to the subject-matter of the bill." Exactly how the $700 billion bailout is germane to Mental Health issues I leave as an exercise for the reader. But, in any case, we can only report what secondary sources say about this -- how common or rare the practice is historically isn't relevant without sourcing and strays into WP:OR, WP:SYNTH, etc. -- Kendrick7talk 19:49, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I just added some material on this to the "Flint" article, which is badly in need of a reworking anyway.

I would disagree to some extent on whether we can use primary sources on something like this. I haven't checked the latest version of the OR policy in a while, though.

At any rate, the bill (H.R. 1424) started out as a taxation measure (the Wellstone bill). The original Wellstone bill had specific amendments to tax provisions of the Internal Revenue Code. The "Genetic" part didn't come in until somewhere in the middle of the process. Famspear (talk) 20:03, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Here's some more on the history, from the U.S. House of Representatives web site:

There are 6 versions of Bill Number H.R.1424 for the 110th Congress
1. Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007 (Introduced in House)[H.R.1424.IH]
2. Paul Wellstone Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act of 2007 (Reported in House)[H.R.1424.RH]
3. To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require... (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)[H.R.1424.EH]
4. To amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of the Public Health Service Act, section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to require... (Placed on Calendar in Senate)[H.R.1424.PCS]
5. Resolved, That the bill from the House of Representatives (H.R. 1424) entitled `An Act to amend section 712 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, section 2705 of... (Engrossed Amendment as Agreed to by Senate)[H.R.1424.EAS]
6. To provide authority for the Federal Government to purchase and insure certain types of troubled assets for the purposes of providing stability to and preventing disruption in the economy... (Enrolled as Agreed to or Passed by Both House and Senate)[H.R.1424.ENR]

See [3].

Item 6 is the one actually enacted into law.

In item 1, the original "Wellstone" version, section 4 of the Wellstone text would have specifically amended section 9812 of the Internal Revenue Code, a tax law. Famspear (talk) 20:10, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: In the case of the Origination Clause, the "topic" that must (presumably) be "germane" is the topic of "revenue" (which includes, but is not limited to, taxation). In the "Flint" case, the taxation in the original bill was "inheritance taxation" while the taxation in the final bill actually enacted into law was an income tax (some sort of corporate income tax, if I recall correctly). The Supreme Court upheld the law, even though the two revenue provisions dealt with completely different kinds of taxes.

In the case of Public Law 110-343, the relationship is even closer, as both the proposed "Wellstone" tax measure AND the tax measures finally enacted both dealt with the income tax (maybe other stuff, too, I don't know). Famspear (talk) 20:16, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

In regards to your postscript, per the PDF above, the 9th circuit did rule along those lines in a challenge to the Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, where the Senate similarly lobotomized a randomly selected unpassed House revenue bill and completely replaced it with a new bill (the largest tax increase in history, according to some); however, SCOTUS has never ruled on the Constitutionality of such a procedure. In my opinion, to treat any revenue bill passed by the House as simply a "bucket" with which the Senate can empty and refill with whatever revenue law it likes undermines the Constitutional intent of the Founders, and wasn't what the court decided in Flint. -- Kendrick7talk 21:01, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Dear Kendrick7: I think see what you're saying: Essentially, the "bucket" argument is different from the factual situation in the "Flint" case. And (taking your word for it, as I haven't researched it) since the Supreme Court itself has never ruled in a case on these precise facts, maybe the Supreme Court might distinguish the "Flint" case and rule the opposite if a case with the facts of the 2008 economic bailout were presented to the Court. That's a respectable position, whether I agree with it or not.
Anyway, I'm not sure that I agree with the argument that the Senate cannot, under the Origination Clause, empty and refill the bucket to its heart's desire. I argue that this process -- treating a bill as a "bucket" by gutting the bill and completely replacing the text -- very much comports with the intent of the Founders.
And it's pretty much a tempest in a teacup; if both houses of Congress want to pass a bill, they will do so. If a court struck down Public Law 110-343, the House of Representatives could easily simply re-introduce the same language under a brand new "bill number," starting the process all over from scratch. There's nothing in the Constitution to prohibit that. And this particular law illustrates that when Congress wants to, it can act very quickly to "correct" things. In fact, the President signed the bill into law the same day that the Congress passed it, which "physically" is a bit of a logistical feat, considering how slowly Congress sometimes acts. Anyway, whether I agree with you or not, it's not up to me anyway -- if someone wants to litigate it, it's up to a court of law to decide.
The bottom line for me is: While I haven't "bought" the idea that this is a wise or beneficial law, my sense is that the legal process by which it was enacted is appears to be constitutional under the Origination Clause. Just my opinion. Famspear (talk) 21:24, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

HR 1424

{{editsemiprotected}} Please add

"HR 1424" redirects here. For the star (HD 28503), see List of stars in Perseus.

76.66.201.179 (talk) 08:24, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

 Done. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

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Short title

Apparently, the act has an official short title, Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Shouldn’t the article be renamed ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.244.71.254 (talk) 10:30, 2 August 2016 (UTC)

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