The $39 billion deficit-reduction bill signed by President Bush last week was nearly a year in the making. It passed in the House by a mere two votes, and it passed in the Senate only after Vice President Cheney broke a tie. But a clerk's error has raised the possibility that the bill might not be law yet, after all.
<snip>
But behind the scenes there was a scramble going on. It seems a clerk accidentally changed a number on one of the Medicare provisions of the bill after the measure left the Senate but before it returned to the House for a final vote. The mistake -- worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- was fixed before the bill went to the White House. But it appears that the bills that passed the House and Senate were not the same -- and that's a problem.
<snip>
If Congress doesn't revote, however, there is a long line of people who could sue, starting with those affected by the billions of dollars in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, said Sara Rosenbaum, a law professor at the George Washington University School of Public Health.
"Any aggrieved party, whether it's a large hospital that was supposed to get more Medicare payments, or a beneficiary who was supposed to get more Medicaid benefits, could allege, potentially, in court, that the government conduct was unlawful because in fact there was no change in the law. The bill is a nullity," she said.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5203356&ft=1&f=1
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
