"Most things take a year around here, and others take 203," quipped Bill Martin, a Michigan state representative who helped lead the ratification drive. "I believe that the passage of this legislation has every thing to do with the reform attitude of Congress today."

In pressing for the Amendment, which was originally sent to states for ratification as part of the Bill of Rights, Madison uttered words that would not have raised a brow in the well of the House today.

"There is a seeming impropriety in leaving any set of men without control to put their hand into the public coffers, to take out money to put in their pockets," he said as he proposed the Amendment.

While many members of Congress did not dare speak against an Amendment that touches the sensitive issue of Congressional privilege, Representative Don Edwards, chairman of the Judiciary Committee's subcommittee on Constitutional rights, said the measure was unnecessary.

"To put specific things like this in our beautiful Constititution is disturbing," said Mr. Edwards, a California Democrat. "If James Madison had been interested in this provision, he would have put it in the Constitution. He was sitting there the whole time."

Mr. Edwards said the Amendment was duplicative of current law and that his colleagues were pushing for it as a way of "playing to the folks back home." Legal Questions

Beyond the political ramifications, legal scholars raised questions about the Amendment's legal standing -- the thorniest, and most immediate, being whether an amendment could take effect 200 years after it was drafted. The first Congress put no deadlines on ratifying the Amendment, though in recent years amendments, like the Equal Rights Amendment, have been sent to the states with time limits for ratification.