Does the Amtrak Error Invalidate the Whole Spending Bill?

I know I know, long time no write. But I just had a thought that I had to share.

As you may have heard, as a result of a typo, President Obama recently signed a law that requires that passengers transporting a firearm on an Amtrak train be locked in boxes for the trip, not the firearms, the passengers. I thought the story was pretty funny when I first read it. According to Fox News:

It's a mistake in the law's wording. But for now, the clerical error is the law of the land.

Earlier this week, Congress sent the president a massive spending bill that funded dozens of federal departments. Tucked into the transportation section of the legislation are safety requirements for Amtrak customers who carry firearms on board the government-backed train system. The bill Congress passed mandates that passengers with firearms declare they have weapons with them in advance and stow them in locked boxes while on the train.

The bill text was correct when the House approved the legislation last week. The Senate followed suit Sunday, but somewhere along the line, the language that referred to putting the guns in locked boxes morphed into stuffing "passengers" into locked boxes.

Aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., became aware of the problem Wednesday night as the House voted on its final slate of bills for the year. Pelosi's staff tried to negotiate with Republican aides to see if they would agree to change the text of the bill without revoting the entire piece of legislation. But it was all for naught as Obama had already signed the measure into law.

But if the bill President Obama signed was not the same bill passed by Congress, it can't be the law of the land. As I recall from Schoolhouse Rock, for a bill to become a law, the same bill has to pass both houses of Congress and be signed by the president. The bill the president signed was not actually passed by Congress. Since Congress chose to combine all these disparate items into a single bill, the problem is with the entire bill, not just the Amtrak section. Does that mean those federal agencies are currently operating (i.e. spending money) illegally?

It seems to me that Congress might need to pass a corrected bill ASAP. Of course it would be a shame if something like that screwed up Harry Reid's timetable to pass a health care bill by Christmas Eve....