Content approved by Jerry Parker The people who make up the United States Congress have the job of creating laws. Every law in the United States begins as a bill. The bill must be approved by the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president before it becomes a law. This is called the legislative […]
Content approved by Jerry Parker
The people who make up the United States Congress have the job of creating laws. Every law in the United States begins as a bill. The bill must be approved by the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the president before it becomes a law.
This is called the legislative process. Knowing the journey a bill takes on its way to becoming a law can help you understand more about where America’s laws came from and how we can make new ones.
Someone has to come up with an idea for the law, and that someone can be anybody, even a kid! When someone has an idea for a new law, the next step is to contact one of their representatives in Congress to talk to them about it. If the representative likes the idea, they can start the legal process of making it into a law. They’ll do some research on the idea, and then they’ll write up a proposed law, called a bill. Next, they’ll talk to their fellow representatives to find other people willing to sponsor the bill, meaning that they will support it and help to introduce it in either the House or Senate.
Now, the representative will introduce the bill. In the House of Representatives, bills are introduced by placing them into a box on the House clerk’s desk. The clerk will then assign a number to the bill that starts with the letters “H.R.” A reading clerk will then read the bill to all of the representatives. The House speaker, the person in charge of the House, then sends the bill to a House committee.
Bills can be introduced by senators, too, and the process works the same way in the Senate. Bill numbers in the Senate start with “S.” instead of “H.R.”
Once a bill is given to a committee, the members of the committee review, research, and revise the bill. After this, the members will vote to decide whether to send the bill back to the House or Senate floor. They might also decide to send the bill to a subcommittee to do more research. Once a bill gets the committee’s approval and goes to the floor, all of the lawmakers can debate it.
Once a bill reaches the floor, all of the representatives will discuss it and explain why they agree or disagree with it. Debate can take a long time or a short time. After the debate is finished, a clerk reads each section of the bill, and the representatives make changes to it as the bill is read. Once the changes are done, the bill is ready for a vote.
Voting can happen in one of three ways:
If the bill is approved, it’s sent to the other house of Congress, where the process starts all over again: The bill is sent to a committee, discussed, approved, sent to the floor, debated, and voted on. Both the House and the Senate have to vote to approve a bill before it can become a law. Then, it can be sent to the president.
The president can do one of three things when a bill is sent to them:
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