Now that we’ve passed election season, things are pretty much wrapping up in the legislative branch. The House has already adjourned and will start a new session on January 3, 2009, according to the resolution H. Con. Res. 440. The Senate is still in session and will meet this month, but without the House they will probably not push any measures forward. Read it all..
October 17, 2008
If the House version is defeated, does the Senate bill die too?
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?
September 28, 2008
“Writing” versus “Sponsoring”, and who decides what gets a vote?
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?
September 18, 2008
What Does “Ordered to be reported with an amendment in the nature of a substitute favorably” mean?
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?
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..
