About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

LOG IN
LOG IN


41 Legislative History of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 P.L. 100-418 [i] (1988)

handle is hein.leghis/lvehyoteobs0041 and id is 1 raw text is: OMNIBUS TRADE AND COMPETITIVENESS ACT OF 1988 P.L. 100-418 102 Stat. 1107 August 23, 1988 The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 is one of the largest and widest-ranging pieces of legislation the U.S. Congress has enacted. The bill that was signed by President Reagan on August 23 of 1988 contained legislative proposals initiated by nearly all of the committees in both the House and Senate. In the 99th Congress, several legislative initiatives relating to U.S. and foreign trade were combined into a single omnibus bill, H.R. 4800, with the core of the bill being the proposals of the House Committee on Ways and Means contained in H.R. 4750. H.R. 4800 passed the House in 1986 but was not considered in the Senate. In 1987, the first session of the 100th Congress, the bill was reintroduced as H.R. 3. The bill was then referred to the several committees having jurisdiction over its individual titles. These committees then reported out the bill in the form that was then debated on the House floor. The committees of the Senate in the 100th Congress each reported their own trade legislation. These bills were combined around the Senate Finance Committee's trade bill, S. 490, to form S. 1420, very much in the same manner that H.R. 4800 was fashioned in the previous Congress. After passage in the House, H.R. 3 was amended on the Senate floor to contain the text of S. 1420, as amended previously during the long Senate debate. The House and Senate then went into conference to resolve the two versions of H.R. 3. After the version of H.R. 3 that was agreed to in conference was vetoed by President Reagan over his objections to plant closing legislation and provisions concerning Alaskan oil, the House reintroduced H.R. 3, minus the language to which the President had objected, as H.R. 4848, which quickly passed the House and Senate and was signed by the President. In order to assist research, the documents have been grouped by document type (bill, report, hearing, etc.), within that group they have been arranged by committee and within committee by chronological order. The exceptions to this are the omnibus bills, the conference report to H.R. 3, and the congressional debate--these are all items that fall outside the range of committee consideration--and many bills that are related to the legislative history but were not reported by the committee, as these bills were far to numerous to include among the legislative proposals adopted by the original committees. For those who are intimidated by the incredible size of this legislative history, I offer the following advice for