How a Bill Becomes a Law

Question to consider:Is this an effective legislation process?

You’ll be analyzing the process of how a bill becomes a law by diving in to the process itself

You’ll be breaking the process up into pieces and answer a series of questions to get you better familiar

You’ll also be looking at the Legislative Obstacles and analyzing the issues and challenges

By end you should be able to fill out a blank chart with all the major components in place

What you are doing today…

We’re watching “How a Bill Becomes a Law” Take notice to the process the video

explains From your observations…1. How realistic is this? 2. Do you notice any challenges or realities

the video does not take into account?School House Rocks

Let’s start with the classic…

Take a look at the Flow Chart of the process…we’re going through this document a few times

Round 1: Terms Need to know

Read through the chart and pick out the following terms and make sure you know what they mean

Mark Up Report out Rules Comm Conf Comm Reconcile Hearings Provisions Unanimous Consent

Now the process…

The legislative process has often been equated to the sausage making process…its nasty and gross, but the result is tasty

Hog Killiing

Wurstkuche Sausage Making

Sausage Making

Take 5 mins by yourself to just read through the chart

Annotate, highlight, underline- make whatever notes work for you on anything that seems important, questions, confusions

Now, talk to person next to you and walk each through what you observed

Round 2…First read

This time you’re focusing on how this is put together…

Take 3 mins to highlight, annotate, take notes differences between HOR/Sen

Take 2 mins to talk to person-check in with each other

Bringing this out to the floor

Round 3- Structure

Take 3 mins to answer the following questions:

1. What role do you see leadership playing in the chart?

2. What is the role of the conference committee?

Bringing this out to the floor

Round 4- Roles…

Take 3 mins to answer the following:1. How are the words “reconcile”,

“agreement”, & “compromise” related in the conference committee section?

2. What purpose do these words serve?

Round 5- Language…

Now let’s make sure you know this process well…giving it a shot…

You now have a blank flow chart of the process…

Complete the chart using a combination of your own words and the terms from the beginning and let’s see how comfortable you are with this process….

Wrapping up…

From this initial work today on this part of the process… How would you respond to the original question posed today…?

Is this an effective legislative process?

Explain your thought process

Questions, concerns, prayers?

Now turn over your page There you will see an obstacle course where

legislation can fail at one of these stages Let’s read opening lines together for context

Please add 22 and 24 at the bottom 22. The president can refuse to sign bill 23. The senate or HOR can fail to override

the president’s decision

Legislative Obstacles…

Read through the 24 steps and pick out any terms that may be confusing or not entirely clear- highlight them –take 2 mins

Check in with person next to you to clear up any of these terms- 1 min

Out to the floor…

Read 1- Vocab/Terms

On this read, see if you can make some conclusions about the committee system…take 4 mins

How does the committee process influence the legislative obstacle course? Have at least two examples from the steps

Out to the floor…

Read Two-The Committee

Last read…take 4 mins to find how leadership pushes the partisanship in the process…

How is leadership helping to kill bills? Find how/where partisanship is visible in this

process?

Out to the floor…

Read 3- Partisanship & Leadership

Are you ready to respond to the essential question again? Can you make an educated assessment now about our legislative process?

Is this an effective legislative process?

Use at least 3-4 pieces of evidence to support your thought process

Questions, concerns, prayers?