MOMocrats is hosting a
short series, Wonk 101, to cover some of the intricacies of the legislative
process. Why? Well, while School
House Rock remains the gold-standard for entertaining and informative, it does gloss over some of the weirder happenings.
In an effort to make it easier to understand why there are three versions of
health reform percolating in the House and Arlen Specter kept repeating, “There
is no Senate bill,” we present this series. Got a burning question about
something? Please leave a comment.
I thought this first post would cover how a bill gets
written, introduced, and referred to a committee. And the inevitable exceptions
to those rules. The next posts will focus on the chaos wonderment that
is floor action and the conference process. Given the rage over health care
reform, I thought it’d be good to provide a sort of blueprint for following the
process.
When Two (or a Couple Thousand) People Love Each Other An
Idea... From the thousands of constituent requests, meetings with lobbyists,
and handed-down party priorities, a representative might cull a couple dozen
ideas in which to actually invest staff time and draft a bill. Alternatively,
an outside group might draft a bill and then shop it around to members. In
either case, the actual drafting can take months
as people duke it out over exact wording (think “It depends on what the meaning
of “is” is.)
There are questions to be asked and answered: Will it alter
(amend) or repeal existing laws or regulations? Where does it fit in existing
federal statutes? Does the counsel’s office think it is constitutional? Is it
likely to pass? Who can we partner with? How well funded is the opposition?
What happens next?
House: After drafting,
the finished bill is dropped in the hopper, a small box near the Speaker’s
seat. After a representative “drops the bill,” it is numbered. There are
different kinds of legislation: a bill (H.R.); simple resolutions (H. Res) that
do NOT carry any force of law; concurrent resolutions (H. Con. Res.) are passed
by both chambers of Congress and do NOT carry any force of law; and joint resolutions
(H. J. Res.), that need to be signed into law or vetoed and DO carry the force
law.
Once the bill is numbered, the parliamentarian decides which
committee(s) have jurisdiction over the bill. The House Parliamentarian is
appointed by the Speaker, but he (and it has always been a “he”, House-side)
isn’t a political appointee. If he is qualified to serve, then he serves. The
current House Parliamentarian, John Sullivan, is only the fourth since 1928 and
was appointed in 2004.
Senate: There is
no spoon hopper. Senate-side, the bill is simply handed to the clerk for
numbering.
The Senate Parliamentarian is Alan Frumin. Mr. Frumin may end up a major player by way of an
obscure rule. Which just illustrates my main point: Knowing the rules is vitally important to (a) knowing when
someone is trying to sell you a tremendous load of crap and (b) understanding
how a guy no one elected and might end up deciding what is in – and what is out
– in the Senate version of health care reform (more on that in the next posts).
Committee jurisdiction is pretty self-explanatory. A full list
of House Committees
is here; Senate
Committees are here.
After the bill is numbered, the Government Printing Office,
uh, prints the bill, it is loaded into Thomas,
and entered into the daily
proceedings. The bill’s sponsor (read: author) will try to sign-on
cosponsors, particularly folks who sit on the committee(s) that will consider
the bill.
Then we wait. And wait, and wait, and wait. Of the
4,000-5,000 bill introduced in the House each legislation session (two years in
length), about 400-600 are signed into law. In many cases, the committee never
does anything with the legislation – hence the term, “die in committee.”
An important point
about reading: With regard to health reform and a whole lot of other
legislation, there is hysteria about Not! Reading! The! Bill! To which, I say, “Maybe
not.” They have staffers and committee staffers who pre-chew and partially
digest material. The Democrats have held a series of health care prep workshops
with staffers going through the bill, section-by-section, and taking questions.
Reading the entire is good for bragging rights among a certain nerdy sect but some
of it is extraneous – reprinting of entire sections of existing law, for
example.
In much the same way
that people forego reading the entire Bible and instead rely upon their religious
leader(s) for interpretation, or Catholics forego reading each of the
encyclicals, or the secular among us employ a reader to make it through Pynchon’s
Gravity’s Rainbow, so too do our representatives rely on secondary sources. Do
I think it is acceptable to read none, or very little, of the bill? No. But do
I think it is necessary to read every line? Also no.
Oddities: On
relatively rare occasion, when a bill is deemed especially necessary or
politically important, the committee may have only a limited amount of time to
act on a bill. If you look at this
page, you’ll see that the Speaker has required action on H.R. 2868 by
September 30, 2009 and H.R. 2989 by October 16, 2009. If the committees don’t
act by those respective dates then yoink
– the bill will go directly to the House floor for action.
On slightly more common occasion, a bill will be taken up
without committee action on the “suspension” calendar (suspension of normal
rules of order) and passed by unanimous consent. Unanimous consent (UC) is
reserved for bills that are non-controversial – think H.R. 1, Ice Cream is
Awesome. A single dissenter in either the House or Senate can halt the
unanimous consent process. You’ll see a lot more UC’ing of bills near the end
of Congress when members experience a sort of senioritis and just want to go home already, yeesh – to
expedite unfinished business, they UC a bunch of bills in a flurry of
last-minute activity.
Where we are with
health care reform: House-side, the bill has been introduced and numbered
(H.R. 3200). It has been referred to three committees: Energy and Commerce,
Ways and Means, and Education and Labor.
Each committee voted on the bill. Each committee altered it
with amendments and striking this and that. What version will ultimately appear
on the floor is a matter of negotiation between the committee chairs and the
Speaker.
Senate-side, the bill has not been formally introduced or
numbered. One committee, the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee
started working on it and eventually passed a version. Another committee,
Senate Finance, is still working. This is where the “Gang of Six” comes in –
six members of Senate Finance are meeting to hammer out a compromise. As in the
House, which version makes to the floor is a matter for the Majority Leader and
committee chairs.
Up Next: Ringling Bros. Ain’t Got Nothing on This Circus (a/k/a Floor Action).
This is a terrific post. Thanks! I never quite understood why some things are UC and others are not. The "can't we just go home now" explanation makes sense.
Posted by: Glennia | August 20, 2009 at 10:31 AM
Great post! So basically, a lot of House Republicans and Blue Dogs have suddenly become lactose intolerant? (-;
Now if we can just set this to a catchy tune so I can teach it to my kids! I bought the complete School House Rock set for them and they still refer to D.C. as "the capitol city."
Posted by: Lawyer Mama | August 20, 2009 at 10:31 PM