| Abstrakt: |
Essentially all of the outstanding debt of the federal government is subject to a statutory limit, which is set forth as a dollar limitation in Title 31, Section 3101(b), of the U.S. Code. From time to time, Congress considers and passes legislation to adjust or suspend this limit. At the beginning of the 118th Congress, the House repealed a rule that allowed for the automatic passage of legislation suspending the debt limit (i.e., without a separate vote). That House rule (previously Rule XXVIII during the 116th and 117th Congresses) provided for legislation suspending the statutory debt limit to be considered as passed by the House, without a separate vote, when the House adopted the budget resolution for a fiscal year. It was similar to a previous one related to the debt limit (commonly referred to as the “Gephardt rule,” named after its original sponsor, former Representative Richard Gephardt), which was first adopted in 1979 but was repealed at the beginning of the 112th Congress in 2011. The House may consider debt limit legislation without any particular debt limit rule either as freestanding legislation, as part of another measure, or as part of a budget reconciliation bill. The Gephardt rule has been included in the House standing rules for 33 of the 43 years since 1980, when the rule first applied, and through 2022, before it was repealed at the beginning of the 118th Congress. In 16 of the 33 years, however, either the rule was suspended or the respective budget resolution was not adopted. Therefore, in those 16 years, the Gephardt rule did not trigger automatically engrossed debt limit legislation. In other words, in just over half of the years in which the Gephardt rule existed (17 of the 33 years), debt limit legislation was automatically engrossed and sent to the Senate, without a separate vote, when the budget resolution was adopted. During these 17 years, the Gephardt rule led to the automatic engrossment of 20 House joint resolutions increasing the statutory limit on the public debt. In effect, under the rule, in these cases, the House was able to initiate legislation that increased the debt limit without a separate, direct vote on the legislation. Of these 20 joint resolutions, 15 became law. In 10 of these 15 cases, the Senate passed the measure without change, allowing it to be sent to the President for his signature without any further action by the House. However, in the remaining five cases, the Senate amended the rule-initiated legislation, requiring the House to vote on the amended legislation before it could be sent to the President. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
