Scalia is a Scoundrel

It's common for the House to pass a bill of some sort, send it to the Senate, which then amends it to remove all the original language and add their desired language to the bill. Easy-peasy, constitutional as all get-out. Happens all the time, nobody complains. {ABE} Of course it then has to go to confernce. {ABE}Such was the case with the ACA, which originated in the House as HR 3590, the "Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009".Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

Yes, and as I pointed out the bill originated in the House and is therefore constitutional.

He's confused; if te mandate is not there the ACA is toast because only sick people will sign up for insurance (no pre-existing conditions, remember).of course it's not quite that bad but it will skew the distribution far towards the elderly and ill.

Perhaps, although the question has not arisen. Seems unlikely.But you are missing the fact that the ACA originated in the House. "Unconstitutional because it stared in the Senate" is false and SCOTUS has not been asked to rule on that. If the Republicans thought they had a chance of killing it by suing on "started in the Senate" grounds they'd lose at the first level and it'd never get to the Supremes. That's why they haven't tried it.

Affordable Care Act - Wikipedia (see under Legislative History). The Right Strikes Back: A New Legal Challenge for Obamacare:

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Well, there are a few problems. The PLF press release emphasizes the first part of the Origination Clause but not the last part, which says that "the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills." That language is the very reason why the Senate uses shell bills. In fact, the Senate has used shell bills on a number of occasions for major tax legislation. An example is the 1986 tax act, signed by Ronald Reagan.

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The House has the power to enforce the Origination Clause if it wants to. If the House doesn't like what the Senate has done, it can return a bill to the Senate with a "blue slip" -- a memorandum that was traditionally printed on blue paper -- to indicate to the Senate that it thinks that the Senate has violated the Origination Clause. Or it can simply refuse to take up the Senate bill. The health care bill was not blue-slipped; the House leadership raised no objections.

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But the PLF has to prove more than this to win its case. It has to show that the Senate can't amend a House bill that raises revenue and substitute a different bill on a different subject. The Supreme Court's cases, however, say that the Senate can do precisely that.

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In Flint v. Stone Tracy Co. in 1911, the Senate took a House tariff bill with an inheritance tax, jettisoned the inheritance tax, and substituted the nation's first corporate income tax. The Court said that was perfectly fine: "The bill having properly originated in the House, we perceive no reason in the constitutional provision relied upon why it may not be amended in the Senate in the manner which it was in this case. The amendment was germane to the subject-matter of the bill, and not beyond the power of the Senate to propose." The Court didn't explain why the addition of a corporate income tax was germane to a tariff bill or to an inheritance tax, other than the fact that all three were provisions "for raising Revenue" under the meaning of the Constitution.

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But it went nowhere. They lost, appealed, lost to a three judge panel, appealed for an en banc hearing which was denied.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

It wasn't bait and switch. There was no plot to hijack that particular bill. They just looked for a convenient bill already filed that wasn't going anywhere and replaced its contents with the Air.This is SOP and common.Since the bill was not the same as what the House passed, the House could have done any of several things to block it and force a conference or new House vote.They did not.That's how the system works.This is not at all unusual. It's been used by both sides for well over a century. It is in accordance with the Constitution.

No part of the Constitution repeals the first part of that section, and no part repeals the rest of it which says:

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but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.

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You don't get to ignore that part of the constitution just because you don't like it.The ACA started in the house, passed, was amended by the Senate per that article, passed, and the House (as is common) chose to let it go as it was.Perfectly constitutional.{ABE} Of course they can. They can insist that the amended bill be re-presented for a House vote, or a conference committee resolve the differences.They chose not to.{ABE 2} It means "ALL BILLS". What does "the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.Edited by JonF, : No reason given.

H.R. means House of Representatives. Any bill labeled HR started in the House of Representatives. Cool. So what? Yup. All Constitutional. Except it's the Senate version of HR 3590, which by definition did not originate in the Senate. Easy-peasy. It was named: H.R. 3590. A bill that originated in the Senate would be S. 3590.

Yes. No. H.R. 3590 as passed by the House was amended in the Senate, as explicitly allowed by the Constitution. Details matter, especially in law. Saying that H.R. 3590 started in the Senate is flat-out false: the name itself tells you that.