Bearing in mind the surfeit of times that the Underhusen has enthusiastically passed a bill, only for the Overhusen to reject it based solely upon one or two lines within the bill, it seems germane to create a mechanism by which the Overhusen can allow those parts of legislation which pass their muster to .
However, this directly contradicts Section 8 in the Fundamental Laws - which will,
naturlich, require the entire
process of a Fundamental Laws amendment. As such - I introduce this bill now rather than later such that we can get it on the coming ballot.
Incidentally, I should note that this isn't petty reformism; should fervor for an Open Assembly blossom into the firey armageddon I yearn for this decrepit institution to fall into, it is more likely than not that we will retain the institution of the Overhusen as a Monarchial check on unfettered excess, and the line-item veto will be more valuable than ever in those circumstances.
Title
1. This Act shall be titled as the 'Overhusen Line-Item Veto Act'.
Amendments
2. Article I, Section 8 of the Fundamental Laws shall be amended to read as follows:
8. The Overhusen shall vote to pass or veto the legislation upon passage by the Underhusen.
(a) The Overhusen may, by a two-thirds vote, veto one or more Sections or Articles of legislation passed by the Underhusen, with the intention of passing the remainder of the legislation.
(b) Those individual Sections or Articles vetoed by the Overhusen will be returned to the Underhusen, upon which the Underhusen may either accept this veto, or vote to override this veto via the mechanisms outlined in Section 9 of this article.
3. A new Section, numbered Section 10, is to be added under Article I of the Fundamental Laws, which is to read as follows:
10. If the Underhusen does not carry out an override vote within 140 hours from when the Speaker of the Overhusen makes a declaration on the bill's passage or failure, whether the veto in question is line-item or otherwise, they shall be considered to have accepted the veto.
(a) This shall be considered to apply to all legislation prior to the passing of this amendment.
4. All subsequent sections shall be renumbered accordingly.
For those concerned about the value of adding Section 10, under our current laws there is no legal limitation on when, exactly, the Underhusen may 'be reintroduced in the Underhusen for the purposes of...overriding the veto'; someone with malicious and/or shenaniganrous intent could theoretically 'reintroduce', word-for-word, vetoed legislation from Underhusens long-past for override, rather than bringing them through the proper channels.
Yes, it would almost certainly be shouted down as ridiculous and outside the spirit of the law, but it would also be legal by the plain meaning of the law. Which is sort of the point of introducing a law that would make that illegal.
A legal argument might be that the Underhusen Procedural Rules require the bill to be 'reintroduced to the floor in accordance with Section 3', but as I've previously argued, there is no precise legal definition for what tabling a bill is, which is further muddied by its own subsection D - allowing tabled bills to be revived. The interpretation that could very well be chosen is that these were all tabled by default, but
not, in any way, permanently shelved, and could be revived through the simple mechanism of a 'motion to revive' (as said
in Section D.
I additionally make the totally unveiled threat that if Section 10 is deemed unnecessary, I will absolutely unearth and reintroduce legislation for override in subsequent sittings of the Underhusen, because I will either disable this tool of shenaniganry or use it myself, so help me god.
