By Charles Hurt

The long-fought Senate immigration bill that opponents say grants amnesty to 10 million illegal aliens is unconstitutional and appears headed for certain demise, Senate Republicans now say.
 
A key feature of the Senate bill is that it would make illegals pay back taxes before applying for citizenship, a requirement that supporters say will raise billions of dollars in the next decade.
 
There’s just one problem: The U.S. Constitution specifically prohibits revenue-raising legislation from originating in the Senate.
 
“All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives,” according to the “origination clause” in Article I, Section 7.

Republicans — including the bill’s supporters — say this will kill the bill, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he’s offered a simple solution. He wants to attach the immigration bill to a tax bill that has already passed the House. It would then proceed as planned to a “conference committee,” where negotiators from the House and Senate hammer out differences between the two chambers’ immigration bills.

“This is a procedural issue that we could overcome,” said Carolyn Weyforth, spokeswoman for Mr. Frist.

But Minority Leader Harry Reid won’t go along with that fix. His office said yesterday that the concerns raised by Mr. Frist and House Republicans are “technical in nature” and can be ignored.

“If Republicans are serious about enacting comprehensive immigration reform, I’ve got a deal for them,” spokesman Jim Manley said. “All they have to do is nothing. Just let the House and Senate bills go to conference and let the conferees work their will.”

The bill as written, however, will never make it to conference, Republicans say. Under House rules, any member can introduce a “blue-slip resolution” to return the legislation to the Senate. And although there are plenty of House conservatives eager to kill the Senate bill any way they can, Hill staffers say it would likely be done based on “policy-blind constitutional issues.”

“If there is a blue-slip issue, it is not about policy,” said one House aide familiar with the matter. “It’s about procedure and the House’s prerogative to uphold the United States Constitution.”

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While most Americans agree that immigration reform is needed, the Senate bill raises serious issues about how much Congressional leadership favors following the U.S. Constitution, the basis of our republic.

Harry Reid may not think Article 1, Section 7 of the constitution is a big deal, but if the Senate leadership does not care about simple tax revenue rules in the constitution, how much more respect for the constitution could the leadership really have? The constitution is the basis of our republic, it is the base of our laws and our way of life. Even the simplest clause must be followed if we are to pass the freedom our constitution gives us to our grandchildren.

James Madison once said:

I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.

I believe Madison is right. Attaching a tax revenue amendment to the Senate bill is in my opinion, a gradual and silent encroachment into unlawful territory forbidden by our constitution. If the tax bill is allowed to stay in the bill as originally created, the Congress will not only have shown the American people the constitution means nothing, but will have denounced the American way of life and everything the founding fathers stood for. This usurpation of government power must not be tolerated. Republican Party leadership must seize this opportunity to uphold the constitutional principles our nation was founded on.