Are Lame Duck Sessions of Congress Unconstitutional? According to The 20th Amendment, YES!

December 21, 2010 09:34 AM EST
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For a Congress that has squandered more time than any preceding legislative body on programs the American people oppose, the 111th has been the model of industry in the current lame duck session. Yesterday, Harry Reid’s Senate voted on the DREAM Act, http://www.examiner.com/libertarian-in- ... t-is-toast which would have given children of illegal immigrants a fast track to legality, and the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, which bans gays from openly serving in the military. Today it’s on to the START arms reduction treaty.

All of this is of course so much political posturing, paying back debts and assuaging angry constituencies, which flies in the face of the mandate the American people delivered in its midterm vote. But a bigger question is whether any of this legislation is constitutional.

An article by David Fahrentold in today’s Washington Post notes that lame duck sessions of Congress violate the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 03572.html

For the letter of the law you need but look at the 20th Amendment, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentieth_ ... nstitution which was ratified on January 23, 1933. In essence, the amendment was meant “to kill off sessions like this—in which defeated legislators return to legislate.â€