The House of Representatives yesterday passed a Republican debt-ceiling proposal providing that if either chamber of Congress hasn't passed a budget resolution for the upcoming fiscal year by April 15, the congressional payroll office must withhold the paychecks for the members of that body.

In other words, they wouldn't get paid until they act or until the current session of Congress ends in 2015.

But is that provision constitutional?

The 27th Amendment, added to the Constitution in 1992, is intended to prevent members of Congress from giving themselves a raise. But it doesn't merely say that any raise can't take effect until the next Congress. It says members cannot vary their own pay.

Here's the entire text of the amendment: "No law, varying the compensation for the services of the senators and representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened."

The debt limit bill, said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, "was carefully crafted to comply with the requirements of the 27th Amendment."

"The amount that members are paid will not be reduced nor will it be raised," Camp said during Wednesday's House debate. "There is no requirement in the 27th Amendment which states that members have to be paid weekly, biweekly, monthly, or bimonthly, or what have you, only that the pay that they receive will not vary."

Not so, said Rep. Robert Brady, a Pennsylvania Democrat, who believes putting the money in escrow, as the House bill provides, doesn't solve the issue. "If you aren't getting a paycheck in a month and you're going to wait for 18 months, that's varying. So it could be -- and, in my opinion, it is -- a constitutional problem," he said.

Who's right? Does holding the checks, but ultimately giving members their money, avoid a constitutional defect?

Professor Michael Froomkin of the University of Miami School of Law doesn't believe it's constitutional.

"I don't think this is even a close question: In my view, the escrow provision clearly does not [avoid the constitutional defect]," Froomkin said.

"The prohibition on varying the compensation seems pretty clear to me. It means no changes in amount and no changes in time of payment, because there is a time value to money. Anyone who gets a salary would think it a very material change in the terms if the money were escrowed for more than a year and a half instead of being made available to pay the mortgage," he added.

The opposite view came in a statement released by the House Ways and Means Committee, written by conservative lawyers David Rivkin and Lee Casey. "It is creative, it is fiscally responsible, and it is attentive to the text and structure of the Constitution," they said.

Some consideration was given to putting the deferred paychecks into an interest-bearing account, but Republicans rejected that idea, concluding that it would increase members' pay in clear violation of the 27th Amendment.

The Supreme Court has never interpreted the amendment, and no member of Congress has yet come forward to suggest suing over the escrow provision. Given the Supreme Court’s narrow view of who has legal authority to sue, it’s likely only a member of Congress who had a paycheck withheld would have the proper standing to challenge it.

Even though Pennsylvania officials offered no evidence that in-person voter fraud has tainted past elections -- or is likely to occur this fall -- a state court judge ruled Wednesday that challengers of a new photo ID requirement failed to meet the legal requirement to get it put on hold.

Lawyers for the challengers say they will immediately appeal, hoping to get enforcement of the law stopped before the presidential election on Nov. 6.

"I am not convinced any qualified elector need be disenfranchised" by the law, said Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson, a Republican, in denying a request for a court order to stop enforcement of Pennsylvania's Act 18, passed by the legislature in March. It requires voters to present a photo ID at the polling place in order to vote.

Several voting rights groups, including the League of Women Voters and the NAACP, joined with a group of state residents to claim that the law would force thousands of people to say home on election day because they lack the kinds of ID cards required by the new law.

At most, Judge Simpson said, the percentage of registered voters in the state without a qualifying photo ID "is somewhat more than 1% and significantly less than 9%." 

But he said that with the availability of absentee voting, the right of a person without photo ID to cast a provisional ballot, and the opportunities for those with special hardships to seek individual help from the courts, he was not convinced that any of those who filed the lawsuits or the witnesses they called will be prevented from voting.

The judge also said the challengers failed to meet the legal test required to mount what's known as a facial challenge to a law -- a claim that the law on its face is unconstitutional.  "They do not acknowledge the extremely rigorous legal standard for facial challenges requiring a demonstration that there are no set of circumstances under which the statute may be valid."

Similar efforts to stop voter ID laws in other states have been unsuccessful in federal court, which is one reason why the challengers in Pennsylvania decided to sue in state court by claiming that the law there violated the state constitution.

While opponents of the law are hoping they can prevail on appeal in the state courts, one election law expert believes today's ruling will ultimately survive.

"The decision is almost certain to stand," said professor Rick Hasen of the UC Irvine School of Law, author of "The Voting Wars."

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, he said, is divided 3-3 between Democrats and Republicans, who are likely to support today's ruling.

But even if they did split along party lines, Hasen said, "a 3-3 tie leaves the lower court opinion in place. I don't expect there would be any fuller ruling on the merits in this case before November, or that any such ruling would lead to a different result."

The Supreme Court has taken up the controversial issue of life in prison for juvenile offenders. NBC’s Pete Williams reports.