It wasn’t unconstitutional. The bill originated in the house as a pork bill. The Senate amended the bill to put in the bailout.
Like it or not, it passes constitutional muster.
Heh. Sort of. The pork part of the bill is HR 6049. It passed the House in May, and after being amended by the Senate, passed the Senate on September 23, 2008. The vote in the Senate was 93-2, 2 Democrats voted NAY. All of that standing separately from the bailout, "the pork bill" (HR 6049) was in the House, ripe for passage.
The pork bill passed the Senate again, a second time, when approximately the same contents were combined with approximately the House-passed bailout language, and stuffed into HR 1424.
What used to be in HR 1424 is on the cutting room floor.
The other is an annoyance and a technicality that needs to be corrected so future politicians can't do that, because it is in part supposed to protect We the People supposedly “closer” to the House from the Senate; and it is supposed to slow down the process of legislation.
We were railroaded on this by politicians crying “fire” in a non-burning crowded theater and then pointing at the people fleeing as a good reason to panic!
They breeched with bad faith the US Constitution—deceit to get what they wanted. But even if they had not run that scam it is illegal under the 10th.
No, it doesn't.
Congress has the authority to legislate within its areas of enumerated jurisdiction only... at least according to Madison:
it was constantly justified and recommended on the ground that the powers not given to the government were withheld from it; and that, if any doubt could have existed on this subject, under the original text of the Constitution, it is removed, as far as words could remove it, by the 12th amendment, now a part of the Constitution, which expressly declares, "that the powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."
James Madison, Report on the Virginia Resolutions
BTW, the People have no legal standing to sue the federal government, as it is the States that are the parties to the Constitutional compact.