The Hill offers this report on a second suit now filed against Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005. The new suit is filed by Public Citizen (more details here.) As this Roll Call article explained regarding the first suit, “As for the Deficit Reduction Omnibus Reconciliation Act of 2005, the case concerns a minute but extraordinarily significant clerical mistake that resulted in the two chambers passing slightly different versions of the same bill. The error occurred after the Senate vote, when a Senate clerk changed a Medicare reimbursement period for the rental of a certain kind of medical equipment from 13 months to 36 months before sending the bill to the House. After the House vote, the clerk then changed the reimbursement period back to 13 months before it was sent to the president for his signature. Bush signed the measure into law on Feb. 8. This seemingly minor change spells a whopping $2 billion difference to the U.S. Treasury over five years, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.”
The article in The Hill quotes law professor Jonathan Turley as saying: “The appropriate judicial remedy is to strike the entire bill.” I’m not so sure. According to folks who follow this issue more closely than I do who have posted on the legislation listserv, the “enrolled bill rule” (for an introduction, see here) would prevent any inquiry into the circumstances of how the bill was passed. The leading U.S. Supreme Court case is Field v. Clark (1892).
UPDATE: See this Washington Post report, which discusses Field v. Clark.