All You Should Know About the Legislative Process
There is need to read more here about the way the government works since this tends to be the first step towards getting involved therefore makes positive changes through the legislature view here! Thousands of bills are introduced to Congress each year. However many people tend not to understand how the legislative process works despite the impacts these bills can have click here for more. Having an insight on the legislative system requires one to click here on this site for more info.
There are two houses in the legislative branch. The House of Representative and the Senate are the two houses. This was brought about by the Great Compromise of 1787. After every two years the member of the lower chamber are elected. The number of representatives are determined by the population level with each state guaranteed to have one representative. On the other hand the Senate which is the upper chamber, its members are elected every six years here! There can be no change based on state population.
Next is lawmaking process. New laws are drafted in a process where a member of the Congress introduces a bill. As from this website, a bill is a law proposed by someone in the House or representatives or Senate. Its after the bill is introduced that it goes to the committees for consideration. This bill can either be rejected or approved. The law goes on the next process after approval. The members of the Congress debate and vote on it after approval. It’s after the bill passes both the House and the Senate that it goes to the President now! In here the President can either sign the bill into law or veto it which failure to such options within three days, the bill now becomes law automatically.
Another one is Filibuster. This tends to be a legislative tactic used by lawmakers to delay or prevent drafting new laws. Senators delay the voting of a bill by speaking about it for more time. Given that the Senate rules says that any senator can talk about a bill for as long as they want unless three-fifth of the senate votes to end the debate, it means that filibuster can be used to delay and prevent a bill from being voted. There are considerable debates about reforming or removing filibuster but its unlikely that it will change in the future.
Conference Committees. The differences between the House as well as the Senate are resolved by the conference committee. Passing different versions of a bill by the House and the Senate calls for the conference committee to discuss the differences. There is making significant changes to the bill or negotiating new provisions. The new bill after completion is then voted and later proceeds to the President.
The last one is the Presidential veto. Although presidents are very powerful they however do not have the ability to make new laws without working with the Congress. It’s after the Congress passes a bill that it gives the President a period of ten days to sign, veto or ignore it.