page_title: Origination Clause
section_title: Developments since 1789
hierarchical_section_title: Origination Clause / Developments since 1789
caption_attribution_description: English: Daguerreotype of Supreme Court justice Joseph Story.
context_page_description: The Origination Clause, sometimes called the Revenue Clause, is Article I, Section 7, Clause 1 of the United States Constitution. This clause says that all bills for raising revenue must start in the House of Representatives, but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as in the case of other bills.
  The Origination Clause stemmed from a British parliamentary practice that all money bills must have their first reading in the House of Commons before being sent to the House of Lords. This practice was intended to ensure that the power of the purse is possessed by the legislative body most responsive to the people, although the British practice was modified in America by allowing the Senate to amend these bills.
  This clause was part of the Great Compromise between small and large states. The large states were unhappy with the lopsided power of small states in the Senate, and so the Origination Clause theoretically offsets the unrepresentative nature of the Senate, compensating the large states for allowing equal voting rights to Senators from small states.
context_section_description: Many scholars have written about the Origination Clause.  Among the most widely influential was Joseph Story, who wrote in 1833 that the clause refers only to bills that levy taxes:
  [The clause] has been confined to bills to levy taxes in the strict sense of the words, and has not been understood to extend to bills for other purposes, which may incidentally create revenue.  No one supposes, that a bill to sell any of the public lands, or to sell public stock, is a bill to raise revenue, in the sense of the constitution. Much less would a bill be so deemed, which merely regulated the value of foreign or domestic coins, or authorized a discharge of insolvent debtors upon assignments of their estates to the United States, giving a priority of payment to the United States in cases of insolvency, although all of them might incidentally bring, revenue into the treasury.
  The U.S. Supreme Court has decided several cases involving this clause, and all of those challenges to federal statutes failed.  For example, in the 1911 case of Flint v. Stone Tracy Company,  the Court held: "The amendment was germane to the subject-matter of the bill and not beyond the power of the Senate to propose."  But, the plaintiffs in one lower court decision succeeded in striking down a federal statute on Origination Clause grounds. The Supreme Court stated in the 1990 case of United States v. Munoz-Flores:
  Both parties agree that "revenue bills are those that levy taxes in the strict sense of the word, and are not bills for other purposes which may incidentally create revenue." Twin City Bank v. Nebeker, 167 U. S. 196, 202 (1897) (citing 1 J. Story, Commentaries on the Constitution § 880, pp. 610–611 (3d ed. 1858)). The Court has interpreted this general rule to mean that a statute that creates a particular governmental program and that raises revenue to support that program, as opposed to a statute that raises revenue to support Government generally, is not a "Bil[l] for raising Revenue" within the meaning of the Origination Clause.
  What this means exactly is disputed.  According to one scholar, a statute is outside the scope of the Origination Clause if it, "imposes an exaction not to raise revenue, but to enforce a statute passed under the Commerce Clause or other enumerated power." However, according to another scholar, even exactions imposed only under the taxing powers of Congress are outside the scope of the Origination Clause if Congress "earmarks revenues to fund a program it creates."  Regarding the latter view, Justice John Paul Stevens suggested in 1990 that its tendency was to "convert the Origination Clause into a formal accounting requirement. ... "
  A bill that lowers taxes instead of raises taxes may still be a bill for raising revenue, according to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Assuming that a bill is for raising revenue, a further ambiguity in the clause involves how far the Senate's right to amend extends. According to law professor Jack Balkin, the Senate may take a House-originated revenue bill, and "substitute a different bill on a different subject."  On the other hand, law professor Randy Barnett says: "The Supreme Court has never approved the 'strike-and-replace' procedure. ... "
  Not only the House of Representatives, but also the Senate and the judiciary have sometimes tried to guard the role of the House with regard to origination of revenue bills.  For example, as early as 1789, the Senate deemed itself helpless to pass a law levying a tax.  And, as mentioned, a federal court in 1915 struck down legislation contrary to the clause.  The U.S. Supreme Court has expressed willingness to address such issues, according to its 1990 opinion by Justice Thurgood Marshall in Munoz-Flores:
  A law passed in violation of the Origination Clause would thus be no more immune from judicial scrutiny because it was passed by both Houses and signed by the President than would be a law passed in violation of the First Amendment.
  In 2012, the joint dissent in the U.S. Supreme Court case National Federation of Independe
caption: Justice Joseph Story
exif: {}