this episode of crash course is brought toyou by squarespace. hi, i'm craig, and this is crash course: governmentand politics, and today, i've got my work cut out for me because i'm going to try todo something that every single social studies teacher in the u.s. has tried to do, eventhough there is a perfectly good cartoon you could just show. it's from the '70s. it'scatchy. it's fun. that's right, today we're going to learn howa bill becomes a law. but we're not going to be able to license the schoolhouse rock song. i'm just a bill, yes, i'm only a - you knowwhat has a bill? an eagle. [theme music]
okay, i think the only way we're going to possiblybe able to compete with schoolhouse rock is to jump right into the thought bubble with our owncartoon. and to stop talking about schoolhouse rock. so let's start at the very beginning, whichin this case is a congressman or a senator introducing a bill. the real beginning iswhen he or she has an idea for a law. and even this might come from an interest group,the executive branch, or even the constituents. but the formal process begins with thelegislator introducing the bill. after it's introduction, bill is referred to a committee. although most bills can start in either house,except for revenue bills, which must start in the house, let's imagine that our billstarts in the senate, because it's easier.
congress has the power to make rules concerningthe armed forces, so let's say this is a bill about naming helicopters. anywho, this billwould be referred to the senate armed services committee, which would then write up the billin formal, legal language, or markup, and vote on it. if the markup wins a majority in the committee,it moves to the floor of the full senate for consideration. the senate decides the rules for debate - howlong the debate will go on and whether or not there will be amendments. an open ruleallows for amendments and a closed rule does not. open rules make it much less likely forbills to pass because proponents of the bill can add clauses that will make it hard forthe bill's proponents to vote for. if opponents of our helicopter name bill wereto add a clause repealing the affordable care
act or something, some supporters of the billprobably wouldn't vote for it. if a bill wins the majority of the votes in the senate, itmoves onto the house. thanks thought bubble. we're going to have to go the rest of theway without fancy animation. but i could sing it. laaaa- i'm not going to sing it. i'm notgoing to use a funny voice. the senate version of the bill is sent tothe house. the house has an extra step, in that all bills before they go out to the floorof the house must go to the rules committee, which reports it out to the house. if a billreceives the majority of votes in the house, 238 or more to be exact, it passes. yay! now, this is important. the exact same billhas to pass both houses before it can go to
the president. this almost never happens though.usually the second house to get the bill will want to make some changes to it, and if thishappens, it will go to a conference committee, which is made up of members of both houses.the conference committee attempts to reconcile both versions of the bill and come up with a newversion, sometimes called a compromise bill. okay, so if the conference committee reachesa compromise, it then sends the bill back to both houses for a new vote. if it passes,then it's sent to the president. and then the president signs the bill, boom, done.that's the only option. oh, no, there's two other options, actually. option 2 is for him to veto the bill and we'vegone through all of this for nothing.
the 3rd option is only available at the endof a congressional term. if the president neither signs nor vetoes the bill, and thenin the next 10 days, congress goes out of session, the bill does not become a law.this is called a pocket veto, and is only used when the president doesn't want a law to pass,but for political reasons, doesn't want to veto it either. congress can avoid this all together by passingbills and giving them to the president before that 10 day period. if the president neithersigns nor vetoes a law and congress remains in session for more then 10 days, the billbecomes a law without the president's signature. so that's the basic process, but there is one wrinkle,or if you want to be all madisonian about it, check, on the president's power.
if congress really wanted a bill and the presidenthas vetoed it, they can override the veto if it gets a 2/3rd majority in both houses ona second vote. then the bill becomes a law over the president's signature. aw snap! this is really rare, but it does happen oncein a great while. the taft-hartley act of 1953 passed over truman's veto. i like tocall it the tartley act. shorten it. it's a portmanteau. it doesn't happen that often because if thepresident knows that two thirds of the congressmen supported the bill, he won't veto it. andif congress knows that they don't have two thirds support, they won't try to overridethe veto. nobody wants to try something and
fail in public, right? except for me obviously,if you look at my other youtube channel, wheezywaiter. eh. so there you have it, how a bill becomes alaw. i'll admit, the process is a little cumbersome, but it's designed that way so that we don'tget a lot of stupid or dangerous laws. still this doesn't quite explain why so few lawsget passed. bills have a very high mortality rate, and it's way more common for a billnot to become a law than to become one. the main reason is that there are so many placeswhere a bill can die. the first place that a bill can die is atthe murderous hands of the speaker or majority leader, who refuses to refer it to committee.then the committee can kill the bill by not
voting for it at all. and if they do voteand it doesn't get a majority then the bill doesn't go to the floor, and it's dead. in the senate the murderous leadership cankill a bill by refusing to schedule a vote on it. and any senator can filibuster thebill which is when he or she threatens to keep debating until the bill is tabled. it'sa bit more complex than that, but the filibuster rules have changed recently, so hopefully we won'thave as many filibuster threats in the future. the house doesn't have a filibuster but itdoes have a rules committee that can kill a bill by not creating a rule for debate.the entire house can also vote to recommit the bill to committee, which is a signal todrop the bill or change it significantly.
and of course if either house fails to givea bill a majority of votes, then it dies. this applies to compromise bills coming outof conference committees too. even if a bill gets a majority in both houses then there's that wholeveto thing that the president can do. remember? so, there are many more ways for a bill tobe killed than to become a law. these hurdles are sometimes called veto gates. they can't call 'em bill gates because that'sa person. veto gates make it very difficult for congressto act unless there's broad agreement or the issue is uncontroversial like naming a postoffice or thanking specific groups of veterans for their service, which are two things thatcongress actually does pretty efficiently.
think of all the post offices that aren'tnamed. you can't think of one, can you? name it. you can't. it's not named. veto gates are purely procedural, which meansthey don't draw a lot of attention from the media. the easiest way for congress to killbills is to simply not vote on them or even schedule votes for them. this way they don'thave to go on record as being for or against a bill, just whether they support having a vote. andconstituents rarely check up on this sort of thing. so i hope i managed to do a good job of bothexplaining how a bill becomes a law and why it's difficult for most bills to pass. andi hope i looked good doing it, as well. this might be frustrating but it's strangelycomforting to consider that congress and the
government as a whole were designed to make itdifficult to get things done. a single super-powerful executive like a king can be very efficient, but alsotyrannical. we don't like tyrannical around here. the founders set up these structural hurdlesof the bicameral congress and the presidential role in legislation to reduce the likelihoodthat authoritarian laws would pass. congress added procedural hurdles like committees andfilibusters for the same reason. you can argue that congress has become dysfunctional, butlooking at the process of lawmaking, it's hard to argue that this isn't by design. so next time someone accuses you of being difficult,you just say, "i was behaving in a senatorial manner." thanks for watching. i'll see you next episode
crash course: government and politics is producedin association with pbc digital studios. support for crash course us government comes from voqal.voqal supports nonprofits that use technology and media to advance social equity. learn moreabout their mission and initiatives at voqal.org. crash course was made with all of these nicepeople. thanks for watching.
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