A SERIOUS and previously unexploited flaw in the congressional operating system was revealed Wednesday when House Republicans accidentally passed a bill containing language that caused the American system of governance to vanish into an infinitely recursive legislative loop.

The bill, the Government Shutdown Prevention Act, declares that the House's budget proposal (HR1) will become law if the Senate does not pass a budget to fund the federal government for the rest of the year before April 6th. House leadership seemed to have inadvertently ignored the fact that the phrase "become law" contains the concepts "has been passed by the House" and "has been passed by the Senate". The implication of the measure's language was that the Senate would pass the House's budget if it did not pass a budget, or that if the Senate did not pass a budget then the Senate would have passed the House's budget.

One way to interpret the bill's impact is that it opens up all sorts of heretofore unexplored logic problems that could dramatically complicate democracy and the rule of law. For example, legislators might begin writing bills that declare that if a majority of the House fails to vote for them, they will pass. Other, more playful legislators might write bills declaring that if a majority of the House does vote for them, they will not pass. Bloody-minded legislative pranksters might write bills amending the voting rules of the House to hold that any bill that receives a majority of votes will not pass, while bills that fail to receive a majority of votes will pass. The new voting rule might be written to apply to the voting on the rule itself, potentially creating a permanent state of paralysis on the floor of the chamber, similar to the freezing of time as a spaceship accelerates towards the speed of light at the event horizon of a black hole.

Democracy in America might decide to write up a bill that says "If Congress does not pass our bill by April 6th, then M.S. will be crowned King of America." But when Congress doesn't pass our bill, it seems unlikely that I would actually become King of America. This is the legislative equivalent of trying to eat your own head.