Good question! Me-two-years-ago apparently decided that writing about veto procedure just wasn't important to the piece, which leaves me, two years later, trying to excavate what I thought (and assess anew whether my thoughts back then were good)!
Since the text of this amendment doesn't alter veto procedure at all, I think the only way to interpret this is that a vetoed money bill would follow standard veto procedure: it would be returned to both houses for an override vote -- with no deadline. I did do another amendment modifying the veto, but it wouldn't affect this situation at all. So if the House prevents the Senate from bottling up a money bill using this amendment, the President's subsequent veto would allow the Senate to bottle it up again -- this time, forever.
Is that good or bad? I'm not sure how carefully I thought about this in 2021, but, two years later, I'm inclined to say that it's good... or at least prudent. I have a lot of concerns about presidential power, especially the power of the veto. The veto turns the President from the implementer of Congress's will into far and away the most important shaper and manipulator of Congress's will. (My veto-related amendment was called "Geld the Veto.") Still, if the House passes a money bill by simple majority (perhaps a bare majority), but the Senate opposes it enough to filibuster it for a year, *and* the President opposes it enough to veto it, then that money bill probably doesn't have the kind of broad-spectrum support that bills ought to have to become law, and therefore should not have a glide path through the Senate once vetoed. The House should have more trump cards, but not all the trump cards.
I'm not 100% on this, though. I could see an argument for adding a section to this amendment requiring the Senate to take an up-or-down vote on a veto within, say, a month, but I'm torn about whether that gives the House too much power or exactly the right amount of power. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about it at the time!
This article does do a good job explaining how the Origination Clause is essentially a dead letter, how it goes against the original intentions of how things should work, and interesting information about why they used such a weakened form (I didn't know about the whole "loss of supply" thing).
However, one thing that seems absent from this article is the question of why any of this is a problem. Why is it important that money bills begin in the House?
One argument that seems to be made is that the House, being directly accountable to the people, should have this kind of power because the Senate is far more oligarchic and represents the states rather than the people. As the quote you offer from Elbridge Gerry said, "Taxation and representation are strongly associated in the minds of the people, and they will not agree that any but their immediate representatives shall meddle with their purses."
The problem is that Senators now ARE the immediate representatives of the people. Back during the Constitutional Convention, they were talking about a Senate where the state legislatures chose the Senators--but the Seventeenth Amendment put the choosing of Senators in the hands of the people. So whether it comes from the House or Senate, the people's immediate representatives are the ones who come up with the bills. If anything the Senate might be more accountable to the people nowadays, because of the impossibility of gerrymandering (I suppose the larger size of the elections means that SuperPACs get to play an even bigger role than in House elections, but nevertheless it's still the populace who goes out and does the voting themselves, and one cannot dilute votes with gerrymandering because state borders are so absolute)
The other apparent argument is that the House should have powers the Senate does not have to make up for the Senate's advantage in things like approving the President's nominations. But that again still leaves us with a question of "WHY should each have powers the other does not?" Is it just a vague idea that it isn't "fair" to have one be more powerful? Because that doesn't seem like much of an argument.
Even if we were to believe that it was important the Senate and House be on more equal footing, given the big advantage the Senate has is in confirming presidential appointees, could this not simply be done by having both chambers play a role? I'm not saying we should have each chamber vote separately and someone gets the position if both agree--this would make filling seats even harder--but if we want to try to equalize the issue, how about having both vote, averaging out the percentage who voted yes, and then if it's greater than 50%, the nominee passes? (if it averages to exactly 50%, then the Vice President plays tiebreaker)
This post also seems to be talking much about the two chambers as if they were really all that different in the ethos of those in them. No doubt this was what the founders were thinking, given the considerable differences between the House of Lords and House of Commons... but as you've noted in other posts, political parties changed all of that. What branch or chamber you are in is secondary in importance to your political party (far secondary, in fact). So when it comes to passing funding bills, even if we were to have a strong Origination Clause, what matters is whether the two chambers are controlled by the same party or not. If they aren't, then it doesn't seem like it matters all that much, because you have to pass something the other party will agree on anyway. If they are controlled by the same, I suppose it makes the applicable political party's members in the House marginally more powerful than those in the Senate, but it's not like the Republicans (or Democrats, if they have control) in each chamber operate independently of each other, they obviously do some talking to each other and such.
So in summary: While it's clear the Origination Clause didn't pan out the way they thought it would, I ultimately have to come away with the same question I had at the start: Why, in the present day, does this particularly matter? The argument that it needs to be the peoples' direct representatives who set up the revenue bills, if it had any force to begin with, now has none given the Seventeenth Amendment. The idea that it's not fair for the Senate to get appointment power but the House to get nothing in return seems more emotional than logical, but even if it is valid, could be solved by changing the way appointments work. This on the whole seems like it's a solution looking for a problem.
This is a very reasonable critique, and the missing context is that my plan at the time was to post my amendment repealing and replacing the Seventeenth Amendment the following month.
It is genuinely incomprehensible to me that this was nearly four years ago. I knew I was overdue, I knew that I had become distracted by other reforms (especially for the presidency), and I know I've had a little bit of writer's block* recently. But four years?!
*The reason for the writer's block is because I used some of my core ideas for the Seventeenth Amendment revision in the Gubernatorial Electoral College series. The sequence was supposed to be: Senate --> House --> Presidency, with each chapter building up to the big one. But then I did the presidency early and I'm not sure how to make the Senate chapter readable now that I've blown some of the good bits. Oh, well. I'd better figure it out, or this stuff on the Origination Clause will never make sense!
Good question! Me-two-years-ago apparently decided that writing about veto procedure just wasn't important to the piece, which leaves me, two years later, trying to excavate what I thought (and assess anew whether my thoughts back then were good)!
Since the text of this amendment doesn't alter veto procedure at all, I think the only way to interpret this is that a vetoed money bill would follow standard veto procedure: it would be returned to both houses for an override vote -- with no deadline. I did do another amendment modifying the veto, but it wouldn't affect this situation at all. So if the House prevents the Senate from bottling up a money bill using this amendment, the President's subsequent veto would allow the Senate to bottle it up again -- this time, forever.
Is that good or bad? I'm not sure how carefully I thought about this in 2021, but, two years later, I'm inclined to say that it's good... or at least prudent. I have a lot of concerns about presidential power, especially the power of the veto. The veto turns the President from the implementer of Congress's will into far and away the most important shaper and manipulator of Congress's will. (My veto-related amendment was called "Geld the Veto.") Still, if the House passes a money bill by simple majority (perhaps a bare majority), but the Senate opposes it enough to filibuster it for a year, *and* the President opposes it enough to veto it, then that money bill probably doesn't have the kind of broad-spectrum support that bills ought to have to become law, and therefore should not have a glide path through the Senate once vetoed. The House should have more trump cards, but not all the trump cards.
I'm not 100% on this, though. I could see an argument for adding a section to this amendment requiring the Senate to take an up-or-down vote on a veto within, say, a month, but I'm torn about whether that gives the House too much power or exactly the right amount of power. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about it at the time!
This article does do a good job explaining how the Origination Clause is essentially a dead letter, how it goes against the original intentions of how things should work, and interesting information about why they used such a weakened form (I didn't know about the whole "loss of supply" thing).
However, one thing that seems absent from this article is the question of why any of this is a problem. Why is it important that money bills begin in the House?
One argument that seems to be made is that the House, being directly accountable to the people, should have this kind of power because the Senate is far more oligarchic and represents the states rather than the people. As the quote you offer from Elbridge Gerry said, "Taxation and representation are strongly associated in the minds of the people, and they will not agree that any but their immediate representatives shall meddle with their purses."
The problem is that Senators now ARE the immediate representatives of the people. Back during the Constitutional Convention, they were talking about a Senate where the state legislatures chose the Senators--but the Seventeenth Amendment put the choosing of Senators in the hands of the people. So whether it comes from the House or Senate, the people's immediate representatives are the ones who come up with the bills. If anything the Senate might be more accountable to the people nowadays, because of the impossibility of gerrymandering (I suppose the larger size of the elections means that SuperPACs get to play an even bigger role than in House elections, but nevertheless it's still the populace who goes out and does the voting themselves, and one cannot dilute votes with gerrymandering because state borders are so absolute)
The other apparent argument is that the House should have powers the Senate does not have to make up for the Senate's advantage in things like approving the President's nominations. But that again still leaves us with a question of "WHY should each have powers the other does not?" Is it just a vague idea that it isn't "fair" to have one be more powerful? Because that doesn't seem like much of an argument.
Even if we were to believe that it was important the Senate and House be on more equal footing, given the big advantage the Senate has is in confirming presidential appointees, could this not simply be done by having both chambers play a role? I'm not saying we should have each chamber vote separately and someone gets the position if both agree--this would make filling seats even harder--but if we want to try to equalize the issue, how about having both vote, averaging out the percentage who voted yes, and then if it's greater than 50%, the nominee passes? (if it averages to exactly 50%, then the Vice President plays tiebreaker)
This post also seems to be talking much about the two chambers as if they were really all that different in the ethos of those in them. No doubt this was what the founders were thinking, given the considerable differences between the House of Lords and House of Commons... but as you've noted in other posts, political parties changed all of that. What branch or chamber you are in is secondary in importance to your political party (far secondary, in fact). So when it comes to passing funding bills, even if we were to have a strong Origination Clause, what matters is whether the two chambers are controlled by the same party or not. If they aren't, then it doesn't seem like it matters all that much, because you have to pass something the other party will agree on anyway. If they are controlled by the same, I suppose it makes the applicable political party's members in the House marginally more powerful than those in the Senate, but it's not like the Republicans (or Democrats, if they have control) in each chamber operate independently of each other, they obviously do some talking to each other and such.
So in summary: While it's clear the Origination Clause didn't pan out the way they thought it would, I ultimately have to come away with the same question I had at the start: Why, in the present day, does this particularly matter? The argument that it needs to be the peoples' direct representatives who set up the revenue bills, if it had any force to begin with, now has none given the Seventeenth Amendment. The idea that it's not fair for the Senate to get appointment power but the House to get nothing in return seems more emotional than logical, but even if it is valid, could be solved by changing the way appointments work. This on the whole seems like it's a solution looking for a problem.
This is a very reasonable critique, and the missing context is that my plan at the time was to post my amendment repealing and replacing the Seventeenth Amendment the following month.
It is genuinely incomprehensible to me that this was nearly four years ago. I knew I was overdue, I knew that I had become distracted by other reforms (especially for the presidency), and I know I've had a little bit of writer's block* recently. But four years?!
*The reason for the writer's block is because I used some of my core ideas for the Seventeenth Amendment revision in the Gubernatorial Electoral College series. The sequence was supposed to be: Senate --> House --> Presidency, with each chapter building up to the big one. But then I did the presidency early and I'm not sure how to make the Senate chapter readable now that I've blown some of the good bits. Oh, well. I'd better figure it out, or this stuff on the Origination Clause will never make sense!