Essential Liberty
”The Origination Clause in Article I, Section 7 states: ’All Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.’ … The Founding Fathers required revenue measures to originate in the House because they wanted this authority to belong to the legislative body closest to the people. … Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) has taken to thumbing his nose at this clear mandate. Recently, he publicly dismissed the Origination Clause as a ’hyper-technical budget issue,’ raised by his Republican opponents as ’a fig leaf to hide their blatant obstruction.’ … One unnamed Senate staffer even speculated that the House’s fealty to the Constitution ’may be part of some Republican plan.’ … Liberal Senate leaders, it seems, are determined to do what they want when they want to do it, Constitution or no Constitution. … One of the chief operational principles of the current Senate seems to be, to paraphrase that famous line from Treasure of the Sierra Madre: ’Constitution? We don’t need no stinking Constitution!’ That’s one more reason why the tea-party movement remains politically relevant more than three years after its birth.” –Heritage Foundation’s Michael G. Franc