[Constitution, Jefferson's Manual, and the Rules of the House of Representatives, 118th Congress]
[118th Congress]
[House Document 117-161]
[Jeffersons Manual of ParliamentaryPractice]
[Pages 279-283]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                       sec. xliii--reconsideration



Sec. 513. Early Senate practice as to 
reconsideration.

  1798, Jan.  A bill on its second reading being amended, and on 
the question whether it shall be read a third time negatived, was 
restored by a decision to reconsider that question. Here the votes of 
negative and reconsideration, like positive and negative quantities in 
equation, destroy one another, and are as if they were expunged from the 
journals. Consequently the bill is open for amendment, just so far as it 
was the moment preceding the question for the third reading; that is to 
say, all parts of the bill are open for amendment except those on which 
votes have been already taken in its present stage. So, also, it may be 
recommitted.



  The rule permitting a reconsideration of a question affixing it to no 
limitation of time or circumstance, it may be asked whether there is no 
limitation? If, after the vote, the paper on which it is passed has been 
parted with, there can be no reconsideration, as if a vote has been for 
the passage of a bill and the bill has been sent to the other House. But 
where the paper remains, as on a bill rejected, when or under what 
circumstances does it cease to be susceptible of reconsideration? This 
remains to be settled, unless a sense that the right of reconsideration 
is a right to waste the time of the House in repeated agitations of the 
same question, so that it shall never know when a question is done with, 
should induce them to reform this anomalous proceeding.


  The House provides for reconsideration by clause 3 of rule XIX.



Sec. 514. Parliamentary law as to 
reconsideration.

  In Parliament  a question once carried can not be questioned again 
at the same session, but must stand as the judgment of the House. 
Towns., col. 67; Mem. in Hakew., 33. * * *





Sec. 515. A bill once rejected not to be brought 
up again at the same session.

  * * * And a  bill once rejected, another of the same 
substance can not be brought in again the same session. Hakew., 158; 6 
Grey, 392. But this does not extend to prevent putting the same question 
in different stages of a bill, because every stage of a bill submits the 
whole and every part of it to the opinion of the House as open for 
amendment, either by insertion or omission, though the same amendment 
has been accepted or rejected in a former stage. So in reports of 
committees, e.g., report of an address, the same question is before the 
House, and open for free discussion. Towns., col. 26; 2 Hats., 98, 100, 
101. So orders of the House or instructions to committees may be 
discharged. So a bill, begun in one House and sent to the other and 
there rejected, may be renewed again in that other, passed, and sent 
back. Ib., 92; 3 Hats., 161. Or if, instead of being rejected, they read 
it once and lay it aside or amend it and put it off a month, they may 
order in another to the same effect, with the same or a different title. 
Hakew., 97, 98.



  In the House, with its rule for reconsideration, there is rarely an 
attempt to bring forward a bill once rejected at the same session. One 
instance is recorded (IV, 3384), but the House has declined to consider 
a bill brought forward after a rejection (IV, 3384; Mar. 9, 1910, p. 
2966). The Committee on Rules may report as privileged a resolution 
making in order the consideration of a measure of the same substance as 
one previously rejected and to rescind or vacate the action whereby the 
House had rejected a measure (VIII, 3391; Mar. 17, 1976, p. 6776); and a 
special order of business nearly identical to one previously rejected by 
the House, but providing a different scheme for general debate, was held 
not to violate this section (July 27, 1993, p. 17115).



Sec. 516. Expedients for changing the effect 
of bills once passed.

  Divers expedients  are used to correct the effects of this rule, 
as, by passing an explanatory act, if anything has been omitted or ill 
expressed, 3 Hats., 278, or an act to enforce and make more effectual an 
act, &c., or to rectify mistakes in an act, &c., or a committee on one 
bill may be instructed to receive a clause to rectify the mistakes of 
another. Thus, June 24, 1685, a clause was inserted in a bill for 
rectifying a mistake committed by a clerk in engrossing a bill of 
supply. 2 Hats., 194, 6. Or the session may be closed for one, two, 
three, or more days and a new one commenced. But then all matters 
depending must be finished, or they fall, and are to begin de novo. 2 
Hats., 94, 98. Or a part of the subject may be taken up by another bill 
or taken up in a different way. 6 Grey, 304, 316.



[[Page 283]]



Sec. 517. Exceptions to the rule against bringing up a 
matter once rejected.

  And in  cases of the last magnitude this rule has not 
been so strictly and verbally observed as to stop indispensable 
proceedings altogether. 2 Hats., 92, 98. Thus when the address on the 
preliminaries of peace in 1782 had been lost by a majority of one, on 
account of the importance of the question and smallness of the majority, 
the same question in substance, though with some words not in the first, 
and which might change the opinion of some Members, was brought on again 
and carried, as the motives for it were thought to outweigh the 
objection of form. 2 Hats, 99, 100.





Sec. 518. Passage of supplementary bills.

  A second  bill may 
be passed to continue an act of the same session or to enlarge the time 
limited for its execution. 2 Hats., 95, 98. This is not in contradiction 
to the first act.





  The House has by a joint resolution corrected an error in a bill that 
had gone to the President (IV, 3519).