How a Bill Becomes Law, and Why It Often Does Not
Most bills introduced in Congress never become law, and that is closer to design than to dysfunction. A plain walk through the path legislation must travel.
In a typical session of Congress, thousands of bills are introduced and only a small fraction are ever signed into law. Seen from a distance, that looks like failure, and it is regularly denounced as one. Seen up close it is closer to the design the Framers intended: a chamber of many gates, each of them an invitation to stop and think again before the country binds itself to a new rule.
The route is worth knowing in its plain outline. A bill is introduced, referred to a committee where most quietly expire, and, if it survives, amended, reported, and put to a vote. It must then clear the other chamber in identical words before it reaches the President's desk. To trace that path is to learn where a citizen's voice can actually be brought to bear, and where it is merely spent.