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While you were preparing for your big New Year’s Eve party, the President’s Executive Clerk was deftly avoiding a Constitutional conflict. The effect isn’t earth-shattering, but I think it’s a fascinating example of how our Constitution works in practice. Consider this a lesson in your graduate course of How a Bill Really Becomes a Law (or doesn’t, in this case).

My old boss Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-MS) once told me, “Others want to win the debate. You help me win the vote.” After all the important preliminaries, practical legislating ultimately becomes a question of procedural rules and how many votes you have on any given question.

Critical policy fights sometimes happen long before a bill comes up for a vote.  Legislative process and strategy intersect early to determine the balance of power for a future vote on policy.  Health care legislation is several months away from a floor vote, but the tactical maneuvering has already begun.
Fair warning:  we’re going to work [...]

At Tuesday evening’s press conference, Jake Tapper, Senior White House Correspondent at ABC News, asked the President:
Q      Thank you, Mr. President.  Right now on Capitol Hill Senate Democrats are writing a budget and, according to press accounts and their own statements, they’re not including the middle-class tax cut that you include in the stimulus; they’re [...]

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About Keith Hennessey

I served as the senior White House economic advisor to President George W. Bush.  My job was to coordinate economic policy for the President, including macroeconomic issues, financial markets and institutions, tax [...]

In May of 2007, I wrote “Why are gas prices high, and what can we do about it?”  At the time, the national average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was $3.22.
The national average price is now 59¢ higher, at $3.81 per gallon.  That’s down 30¢ from a high of $4.11 in early [...]

The Senate is now debating a climate change bill, typically referred to as the “Lieberman-Warner” bill, referring to Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Sen. John Warner (R-VA).  Technically, we think they’ll end up considering a slightly different version of that bill, offered by the Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, Sen. Barbara [...]

Each year Congress considers the “defense authorization bill”.  This bill gives the U.S. military its legal authorities.
The House passed this bill last Thursday.  One provision in the bill would attempt to limit the President’s ability to ignore certain earmarks in the report language that accompanied the bill.  This is an important moment in the debate [...]

Now let’s look at last week’s farm bill procedural snafu.
Last Wednesday we thought the farm bill veto would be straightforward:

Congress passes the farm bill conference report and sends it to the President.  There are several steps in this process.

The bill is passed by both Houses.  That’s the “engrossed bill”.
This engrossed bill is then “enrolled”.  [...]

I wrote the following last Wednesday evening, in anticipation of a straightforward farm bill veto.  Little did I know the procedural snafu that would arise.
I have since edited it and written a follow-up.  I will send the follow-up email soon.  The first, written last Wednesday and included below, explains what we thought would happen.  The [...]