American Politics Today - Essentials (3rd Ed)

280 CHAPTER 9|CONGRESS

which to challenge the president. The other primary motivation was electoral: by

increasing the size of their personal staff , members were able to open multiple dis-

trict offi ces and expand the opportunities for casework.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

Every introductory textbook on American politics presents a diagram that

describes how a bill becomes a law. This book is no exception. However, we provide

an important truth-in-advertising disclosure: many important laws do not fol-

low this orderly path.^22 After presenting the standard view, we describe the most

important deviations from that path.

The Conventional Process

The details of the legislative process can be incredibly complex, but its basic

aspects are fairly simple. The most important thing to understand about the

process is that before a piece of legislation can become a law it must be passed in

identical form by both the House and the Senate and signed by the president. If

the president vetoes the bill, it can still be passed with a two-thirds vote in each

chamber. The basic steps of the process are:

1. A member of Congress introduces the bill.


2. A subcommittee and committee craft the bill.


3. Floor action on the bill takes place in the fi rst chamber (House or Senate).


4. Committee and fl oor action takes place in the second chamber.


5. The conference committee works out any differences between the
   House and Senate versions of the bill. (If the two chambers pass the
   same version, steps 5 and 6 are not necessary.)


6. The fl oor of each chamber passes the fi nal conference committee version.


7. The president either signs or vetoes the fi nal version.


8. If the bill is vetoed, both chambers can attempt to override the veto.

EARLY STEPS

The fi rst part of the process, unchanged from the earliest Congresses, is the intro-

duction of the bill. Only members of Congress can introduce a bill, either by drop-

ping it into the “hopper,” a wooden box at the front of the chamber in the House,

or by presenting it to one of the clerks at the presiding offi cer’s desk in the Senate.

Even the president would need to have a House member or senator introduce his

bill. Each bill has one or more sponsors and often many co-sponsors. (See Nuts and

Bolts 9.2 for a description of the diff erent types of bills.)

The next step is to send the bill to the relevant committee. House and Senate

rules specify committee jurisdictions (there are more than 200 categories), and the

TRACE THE STEPS IN THE

LEGISLATIVE PROCESS