GovTrack.us Blog

Site news and community analysis of U.S. legislation, at GovTrack.us.
October 17, 2008

If the House version is defeated, does the Senate bill die too?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

Q:”What happens to an approved Senate bill with respect to an identical House bill? If the House version is defeated, does the bill end?”

This is a great legislative process question. Let me rephrase it: What are companion bills and how do they work?

Read it all..

September 28, 2008

“Writing” versus “Sponsoring”, and who decides what gets a vote?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

Here’s another legislative process Q&A post. We tackle two questions in this post. Here’s the first:

Does one know who writes a bill? Is writing a bill considered different than being the Sponsor of the bill?

Read it all..

September 18, 2008

What Does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

Using the new Q&A tool, a visitor asked (here):

What does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?

GovTrack tries to answer. Read on… Read it all..

July 6, 2008

Can representatives change their vote?

Author: Josh Tauberer - Categories: questions

A visitor to this site asked me:

Q: How can I find out what a particular representative voted upon and then went back to change his/her vote? I understand that this is done very often so that the hometown folks think that he/she voted one way, but that they go back and change the actual vote recorded later.

Was it really true that Members of Congress can change their votes? Read it all..