revenue bills must originate in the senate house of congress.
revenue bills must originate in the senate house of congress.
which house of congress must revenue bills originate?
the senate
according to the origination clause of the united states constitution, all bills for raising revenue, generally tax bills, must originate in the house of representatives, similar to the westminster system requirement that all money bills originate in the lower house. traditionally, though, appropriation bills also originate in the house of representatives. house appropriations bills begin with "h.r.", meaning "house of representatives". in reference to revenue bills, the constitution also states that the "senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other bills." as with revenue bills, the senate and house each drafts and considers its own appropriation bill. the senate then "cuts-and-pastes," substituting the language of its version of a particular appropriation bill for the language of the house bill, then agrees to the bill as amended.
appropriation bill
as the convention was entering its second full month of deliberations, it was decided that further consideration of the prickly question of how to apportion representatives in the national legislature should be referred to a committee composed of one delegate from each of the eleven states that were present at that time at the convention. the members of this "grand committee," as it has come to be known, included elbridge gerry, oliver ellsworth, robert yates, william paterson, gunning bedford, jr., george mason, william davie, john rutledge, abraham baldwin, and benjamin franklin. in its report to the convention on july 5, the committee offered a compromise. the large states had opposed the connecticut compromise, because they felt it gave too much power to the smaller states. the grand committee's proposal added the requirement that revenue bills originate in the lower house and not be subject to modification by the upper house (although this origination clause would later be modified so that revenue bills could be amended in the upper house, or senate). with this modification, the convention in a close vote adopted the compromise on july 16. nationalist delegates remained bitterly opposed, however, until on july 23 they succeeded in further modifying the compromise to give members of the senate individual voting power, rather than having votes taken by each state's representatives en bloc, as had occurred in congress under the articles of confederation. this accomplished the nationalist goal of preventing state governments from having a direct say in congress's choice to make national laws. the final document was thus a mixture of madison's original "national" constitution and the desired "federal" constitution that many of the delegates sought.
constitutional convention (united states)