For a broad discussion of federalism, have students read The Federalist No. Have students imagine, for example, that they are members of a Congressional committee that is considering a bill with special importance for the people of your community. Skip to main content. Lesson Plan. Photo caption. Capitol dome. Library of Congress. What role do Committees play during the legislative process? How is Committee membership determined? What role do Committees play with regard to oversight and checks and balances?
Evaluate how Committees uphold the Constitutional responsibilities of the Legislative Branch. Lesson Plan Details Content Standards. Analyze change and continuity in historical eras. After the Rules Committee reports a rule for consideration of a bill, the House first considers that special rule itself on the House floor, for approximately one hour.
After debate, the House votes on adopting the special rule; 28 only after its adoption will the House then proceed to consider the bill itself, under the terms specified by the special rule.
In this situation, the House will typically consider the bill in a procedural setting called the Committee of the Whole, 29 which allows Members an efficient way to consider and vote on amendments. After any amendments are offered and debated, Members vote on approval; each amendment requires a simple majority to be agreed to.
After the amendment process is complete, the Committee of the Whole reports to the full House any recommended amendments, which are then usually approved by the House by voice vote. Just prior to voting on final passage, Members will typically briefly debate and then vote on a motion to recommit, which allows the minority party to effectively propose its own amendment.
To consider a bill on the floor, the Senate first must agree to bring it up—typically by agreeing to a unanimous consent request or by voting to adopt a motion to proceed to the bill, as discussed earlier. Perhaps the modern Senate's defining feature is the potential difficulty of reaching a final vote on a matter. Most questions that the Senate considers—from a motion to proceed to a bill, to each amendment, to the bill itself—are not subject to any debate limit.
Senate rules provide no way for a simple numerical majority to cut off or otherwise impose a debate limit and move to a final vote. As a result, Senators can wage or threaten to wage a filibuster on most amendments, bills, or other motions—in effect, insisting on extended debate or taking other actions intended to delay or prevent a final vote.
In addition, under most circumstances, neither debate nor amendments in the Senate are required to be germane. Senate Rule XXII, often called the cloture rule, does allow a supermajority to limit debate on a bill, amendment, or motion; in addition, in the case of a bill, cloture limits the amendments that can be offered.
Two days of session later, Senators vote on the cloture motion. If three-fifths—usually 60 Senators 39 —agree, then further consideration of the bill is limited to 30 hours, during which only germane amendments submitted in advance can be offered. After this concluding period of consideration, the Senate will take a final vote on the bill.
This vote requires only a simple majority for approval. However, because a cloture process is often required to end debate on a bill, often the bill first must garner the support of a three-fifths supermajority. Even with the necessary supermajority support, use of this cloture process can require the use of significant amounts of Senate floor time.
Overall, these rules and practices governing floor debate and amending in the Senate provide significant leverage to each individual Senator.
Rather than relying on the formal rules like cloture, however, frequently the Senate can more effectively act using unanimous consent agreements. Through the use of these agreements, the details of which all Senators have agreed upon, the Senate can more effectively process its business while protecting the procedural rights of each of its Members.
Although many votes are conducted by voice, a recorded vote is required in some cases, and it is often requested by Senators in others. Unlike the House, the Senate does not have an electronic voting system; recorded votes are conducted through a call of the roll.
In addition to full legislative authority, the U. Constitution provides the Senate with two unique responsibilities: first, the power to confirm certain presidential nominees to the federal judiciary and certain executive branch positions; and second, the power to approve treaties. In the legislative process, treaties are treated very much like bills: they are referred to the Foreign Relations Committee, where they may be considered and reported.
The Senate can consider a treaty on the floor under similar procedures used for legislation. However, the Constitution requires that two-thirds of voting Senators agree for a treaty to be ratified.
Most presidential nominations are referred to the relevant Senate committee of jurisdiction. Prior to potential committee action to report a nomination, a committee may hold a hearing at which the nominee answers questions from the committee's members. If a nominee is considered on the Senate floor, his or her confirmation requires only a simple majority vote, but nominations are debatable. Therefore, supporters of a nominee may have to use the cloture process to reach a vote on the nominee.
Invoking cloture on most questions requires a vote of three-fifths of the Senate, as described earlier, but cloture can be invoked on a nomination by a simple majority threshold. Using cloture to reach a vote on a pending nomination, however, may take significant floor time. A bill must be agreed to by both chambers in the same form before it can be presented to the President. Therefore, at some point in the legislative process, either the House must act on a Senate bill or the Senate must act on a House bill.
Frequently, identical or similar proposals are introduced in the House and in the Senate, each potentially moving through the legislative process in the chamber in which it was introduced. In this case, when one chamber receives the bill passed by the other, it may act on and possibly amend that bill, or alternatively, it may consider and possibly amend its own bill first—eventually substituting its language into the other chamber's bill for the purposes of resolving differences between the two proposals.
Once one chamber passes a bill, it is engrossed—that is, prepared in official form—and then sent or messaged to the other chamber. In a majority of cases, the second chamber simply agrees to the exact text passed by the first chamber, in which case Congress has then completed its action on the bill. In some cases, the second chamber instead decides to amend the first chamber's bill. In some circumstances, the alternative may even embody a proposal on a different topic.
Once the second chamber agrees to this proposed alternative to the bill, it may send the proposal back to the first chamber for possible consideration and a vote. The receiving chamber may also respond with a counterproposal, and so on. This back-and-forth trading of proposals by the House and Senate is called amendments between the houses or amendment exchange, or sometimes simply ping-pong.
For the bill to have a chance of becoming law, one chamber must eventually agree to the proposal that the other chamber sent it. Sometimes, the resolution of differences between the House and Senate proposals may instead be accomplished through a conference committee. Each conference committee is made up of Members of the House and Members of the Senate—called conferees—who are drawn primarily from the standing committee s with jurisdiction over the bill.
Reaching a vote on a conference report in the Senate may require a cloture process, and in the House, conference reports are typically considered under a special rule. If the conference report is to become law, both chambers must agree to it.
Once both chambers of Congress have each agreed to the bill in the same form, it is enrolled 53 —that is, prepared in its final official form and then presented to the President. Beginning at midnight on the closing of the day of presentment, the President has 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign or veto the bill. If the bill is signed in that day period, it becomes law.
If the President declines to either sign or veto it—that is, he does not act on it in any way—then it becomes law without his signature except when Congress has adjourned under certain circumstances. If the President vetoes the bill, it is returned to the congressional chamber in which it originated; that chamber may attempt to override the President's veto, though a successful override vote requires the support of two-thirds of those voting.
Only if both chambers vote to override does the bill become law notwithstanding the President's veto; successful overrides of a veto are rare. Bills that are ultimately enacted are delivered to the Office of the Federal Register at the National Archives, assigned a public law number, and included in the next edition of the United States Statutes at Large.
Constituents must contact their own senators and representatives and convince them to co-sponsor the bill. The way that is done is by having the lawmaker's staff contact the original sponsor and ask to have his or her name listed as supporting the bill. Congressional committees are the "workhorses" of Congress. As the number of issues brought before Congress grows, lawmakers increasingly rely on the committee system to sift through the facts and determine how issues should be resolved.
Congress is made up of both standing committees and select committees. Generally, standing committees have the power to generate legislation in their particular areas of jurisdiction, such as tax writing or appropriations.
Select committees, such as the Senate Special Committee on Aging, are primarily advisory in nature. Most committees have delegated specific issues under their jurisdiction to subcommittees, whose job is to analyze each issue and eventually make a recommendation to their parent committee or full committee, as it is sometimes called. Here again, it is vitally important that constituent contacts be made with the subcommittees as early in the process as possible. In their earliest stages of review, subcommittees welcome input from interested organizations and individuals.
In many instances, a subcommittee will hold public hearings, either in Washington, DC or elsewhere, where constituents may ask to present their positions. If your senator or representative is not on the relevant subcommittee, does that mean you have no influence over the outcome? It is true that members of a subcommittee are regarded as "specialists" by their colleagues and, therefore, can wield considerable power in deciding whether or not an issue will be advanced through the legislative process.
However, your own senators or representatives, whether or not they are on the subcommittee, often can be effective intermediaries, depending on their personal or political relationships with the subcommittee members. Once a committee has approved legislation, it becomes eligible for debate on the House and Senate floors, where it may be passed, defeated or amended. Because floor debates often are scheduled on short notice, you should prepare your messages e.
However, keep in mind that timing is extremely critical. Any communications about legislation that is coming up for floor debate should arrive as close to the time of voting as possible. It is usually the case that the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill. When that occurs, a handful of members from each chamber are appointed to serve on a conference committee that attempts to work out a compromise.
A conference committee usually consists of selected members of the House and Senate subcommittees that originally developed the legislation. In some instances, conference committees may need to resolve only a few issues; in the case of appropriations bills, there may be several hundred to be reconciled. Constituents whose senators or representatives happen to be on a conference committee can play a crucial role in the deliberations.
The end product of the meetings is a conference report containing a compromise bill and a section-by-section explanation of the agreed-upon compromise.
Once both the House and Senate agree to the conference report, the measure is sent to the President for approval or veto. While senators and representatives are the ultimate decision makers, it is important to recognize that their staff members can have significant influence over the course and content of legislation. Constituents are urged to maintain ongoing contacts with these individuals, especially subcommittee staff and the lawmakers' own legislative aides.
When the time comes to contact a lawmaker about specific legislation, his or her staff aide also should be alerted. This is one way of ensuring that your issues are not lost or overlooked among the stack of legislation that is discussed every day. Constitution directs that the House initiates action on all revenue legislation, so these two House committees have important roles on federal budget and tax issues.
The Senate has the lead on Executive and Judicial nominations as well as international treaties, so those committees are key for these matters. Being on committees is important, but it is not possible to serve on all of them. When members of Congress are first elected, and at the beginning of each new Congress, party leadership in both houses assign them to serve on certain committees. Additionally, members can provide input for which committees they are most interested in joining.
Members of the House of Representatives serve on fewer committees than the Senate. The needs of the committees are also important to consider during committee placement; for example, leadership considers where members are from to diversify geographic connections.
Since members are frequently assigned to committees in which they have specific interests or a professional background, bills are examined by members who ideally have a working knowledge of the policy topic in the early stages of legislation.
This makes committees useful in ensuring that bills are thoughtfully reviewed before debates on the House and Senate floors. Committees see legislation at its very first stages, with focus on debating and amending to refine the bill. When a bill is referred to a committee and the committee chooses to discuss it, a hearing is often scheduled on the topic to consider different perspectives. The committee leadership decides the time to amend and pass out a bill, which is known as the mark-up process.
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