Speaker Ryan says constitutional technical error holding up Russian sanctions bill
Speaker Paul Ryan on Thursday said the bill that imposes new sanctions on Iran and Russia is being held up to protect the constitution.
“All revenue measures must originate in the house, there’s a constitutional issue here. And so we have lent the technical assistance that they [the Senate] need to write this bill correctly,” Ryan said during the GOP weekly press conference.
The measure, facing numerous setbacks, also hit a snag in the House after it passed last week. According to Judge Napolitano, Fox News senior judicial analyst, the bill should have passed the House first.
“The problem is that the bill was passed in the Senate first,” he told the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney. “The constitution says all laws affecting money, federal dollars, must originate in the house. It must be passed in the House first. So they’ve got to go through the process all over again. Occasionally, this slips through, but quite frankly the constitutional “monitors” in the Senate should have known this and sent it over to the House first.”
Although Judge Napolitano could not pinpoint who was in charge of the schedule, he put the onus on that person to “know about this provision in the Constitution,” adding that “it’s been there for 230 years.”
He also pointed out that there have been other cases like this originating in the Senate that have become laws.
“It’s a clause of the Constitution often not honored but for some reason the Republicans in the house have chosen to honor it,” he said.
Although the Senate has been urged to fix the bill before leaving for July 4th recess, Judge Napolitano said it would face “substantial delays” due to Speaker Ryan’s decision to honor the Constitution.