Congress, Committees and bills
April 26th 2010 21:34
The next time I posted information on my blog I said we would look into another area concerning how a bill becomes law. The previous post I gave you the basics. Now we will examine a bill as it goes through committee. The focus of this posting is on how Congress using committees as well as the committee’s responsibility is when it comes to bills becoming law.
Did you know that both the House of Representative and the Senate are divided into subgroups called committees? Each committee is an overseer of a specific area of the government such as but not limited to Defense, Military, Appropriations, Oversight, Energy and Agriculture, this is just a few. Here is a URL that shows the house committees Really Long Link
Committees are large and Congressmen serve on more than one committee. An example is Congressman Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania. As of the 111th Congress he serves of the Armed Services Committee, the Committee on Education and Labor, as well as the Committee on Small Business where he presides as the Vice Chairman (Sestak’s webpage, 2010). Each committee is broken down into sub-committees which deal with specific topics. Ryan Paul a congressman out of Wisconsin, currently sits on two committees; the Budget Committee and the Committee on Ways and Means. It is this committee that is broken into smaller sub-committees. Congressman Paul is a member of the Subcommittee on Oversight as well as the Subcommittee on Health (Ryan, webpage 2010). It is the sub-committee who looks into smaller concerns an example. in December of 2009 a House subcommittee approved legislation aimed at forcing college football to switch to a playoff system to determine its national champion. Some of us might think that Congress has much tougher legislation to look into but that is not for me to say. It is however, your right to think about and form an opinion. You may also contact your Congressperson and let them know your opinion or concerns and I would encourage you to do that but, I digress.
The sub-committee when dealing with an issue usually holds hearings. The sub-committee when holding hearings will call witnesses to testify before the committee. The witnesses provide their expertise and possible evidence to help the congressman or woman assess the need or validity of a bill. One example and we can quote many, on Tuesday “April 20, 2010 Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers on that the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers serves as perhaps the best example of the need for the Obama administration's proposed financial regulatory reforms (Burrow, 2010).” “Geithner read from his prepared testimony before the House Committee on Financial Services, they are conducting hearings on the collapse of the once high-flying investment bank” (Burrow, 2010). Once the hearing is held the sub-committee has the committee vote on the bill. If the committee defeats the bill then it dies. If the bill passes, the committee then a report is written and attaches that to the bill and it goes to the full House of Representatives.
That is one method that a bill has to go through to become law and again it seem to me that there is a great deal to think about here and in some instances there are more questions than answers. Some of your questions could be how a bill gets a number, what the senate does and if they have committees? Or additional questions such as bill passage by the House and the Senate, in light of some recent developments like Health Care and the changes after it was voted on. So a great many more discussion topics on “How a Bill becomes a Law.” Will be discussed on future blog posting.
Burrow, D., Daily Finance AOL Money and Finance site 4/2010, Really Long Link
Wikipedia is one source for the information on Congressman Paul Ryan; Really Long Link
Wikipedia is one source for information concerning Congressman Joseph Sestak: Really Long Link
You can learn more information about either one of these men by visiting their web sites.
Did you know that both the House of Representative and the Senate are divided into subgroups called committees? Each committee is an overseer of a specific area of the government such as but not limited to Defense, Military, Appropriations, Oversight, Energy and Agriculture, this is just a few. Here is a URL that shows the house committees Really Long Link
That is one method that a bill has to go through to become law and again it seem to me that there is a great deal to think about here and in some instances there are more questions than answers. Some of your questions could be how a bill gets a number, what the senate does and if they have committees? Or additional questions such as bill passage by the House and the Senate, in light of some recent developments like Health Care and the changes after it was voted on. So a great many more discussion topics on “How a Bill becomes a Law.” Will be discussed on future blog posting.
Burrow, D., Daily Finance AOL Money and Finance site 4/2010, Really Long Link
Wikipedia is one source for the information on Congressman Paul Ryan; Really Long Link
Wikipedia is one source for information concerning Congressman Joseph Sestak: Really Long Link
You can learn more information about either one of these men by visiting their web sites.
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