This a 18 page paper including references. The paper is about the legislative process of law making from the grassroots of the formulation of a bill to the intricate forms of getting the bill formed into legislation in the United States governement.3 main questions of the essay: How and what is a bill/legislation? What are the possible steps that could be taken to create legislation in the United States government? And what are the meanings of log-rolling, implicit and explicit bargaining?To understand the legislative process, we first must understand that a bill is actually started when an idea for gain and or profit for big business, interest groups, constituents, ...view middle of the document...
"The American Dream Restoration Act"(tax code reform), "The Common Sense Legal Reforms Act"(tort and product liability changes), and "The Taking Back Our Streets Act"(crime control), all of this legislation were worded in The Contract with America (Davidson and Oleszek, p.230). Any piece of legislation can be drafted by anyone that would like to help the legislation pass in the House and then Congress. Another tactic that is commonly used with drafting of legislation is packaging of bills. Packaging usually contains a vast amount of legislative issues that was brought to the House floor and died, died in committee, or defeated in vote. They are usually tied in with a large bill, so they can be hidden to have a better chance of passing through and becoming a bill.Once apiece of legislation has been drafted and is ready to be presented to the House for debate, it is then up to the Representative if he or she wants to introduced or brought to the floor early or late in the Congressional session. "A bill that might succeed early in a session could fail as adjournment nears" (Davidson and Oleszek, p. 231). On the flipside of things apiece of legislation that is introduced in the last days of Congress, can become a bill, due to trying to finish Congressional business quickly. Sometimes apiece of legislation can be added or taken off the Congressional agenda, due to reelection concerns. All of these are just the introduction process of the proposed legislation before it is sent to committee.The referral of legislation is very important to the possibility of the passage or failure of the legislation. An example of how important the referral of legislation can be is the Domenici bill S. 790. By Domenici avoiding the word tax in legislation aimed at proposing a charge on waterborne freight he avoiding getting the legislation referred to the Finance Committee, where Russell B. Long, of Louisiana was chairman at the time. Why was this important? Louisiana has one of the two world's busiest and biggest barge ports. Domenici knew that he (Long) could bring up several years worth of legislation before he would bring up S. 790. So, by drafting the legislation without using the words tax he was able to get the legislation to be referred to the Commerce and Environment Committees, which coincidently he served on (Davidson and Oleszek, p.233). Once the legislation has been reported out of committee it can be brought to the House floor for debate and general amendments. Rules of the House states, that a majority of the full committee must be present to report any and all legislation out to the floor of the House. If this measure is violated, the legislation can have a point of order reported against it once it presented to the House floor. "A point of order can halt the proceedings of the legislation being debated on the House floor and only can be lifted by the chamber's presiding officer decides that the contention is valid", (Davidson and Oleszek, p.234). If ...
