Question to consider: Is this an effective legislation process?

 You’ll be analyzing the process of how a bill becomes a law by diving in to the process itself  You’ll be breaking the process up into pieces and answer a series of questions to get you better familiar  You’ll also be looking at the Legislative Obstacles and analyzing the issues and challenges  By end you should be able to fill out a blank chart with all the major components in place

 We’re watching “How a Bill Becomes a Law”  Take notice to the process the video explains  From your observations… 1. How realistic is this? 2. Do you notice any challenges or realities the video does not take into account? School House Rocks

 Take a look at the Flow Chart of the process…we’re going through this document a few times  Round 1: Terms Need to know  Read through the chart and pick out the following terms and make sure you know what they mean  Mark Up  Report out  Rules Comm  Conf Comm  Reconcile  Hearings  Provisions  Unanimous Consent

 The legislative process has often been equated to the sausage making process…its nasty and gross, but the result is tasty  Hog Killiing Hog Killiing  Wurstkuche Sausage Making Wurstkuche Sausage Making

 Take 5 mins by yourself to just read through the chart  Annotate, highlight, underline- make whatever notes work for you on anything that seems important, questions, confusions  Now, talk to person next to you and walk each through what you observed

 This time you’re focusing on how this is put together…  Take 3 mins to highlight, annotate, take notes differences between HOR/Sen  Take 2 mins to talk to person-check in with each other  Bringing this out to the floor

 Take 3 mins to answer the following questions: 1. What role do you see leadership playing in the chart? 2. What is the role of the conference committee? Bringing this out to the floor

 Take 3 mins to answer the following: 1. How are the words “reconcile”, “agreement”, & “compromise” related in the conference committee section? 2. What purpose do these words serve?

 Now let’s make sure you know this process well…giving it a shot…  You now have a blank flow chart of the process…  Complete the chart using a combination of your own words and the terms from the beginning and let’s see how comfortable you are with this process….

From this initial work today on this part of the process… How would you respond to the original question posed today…? Is this an effective legislative process? Explain your thought process

 Now turn over your page  There you will see an obstacle course where legislation can fail at one of these stages  Let’s read opening lines together for context Please add 22 and 24 at the bottom  22. The president can refuse to sign bill  23. The senate or HOR can fail to override the president’s decision

 Read through the 24 steps and pick out any terms that may be confusing or not entirely clear- highlight them –take 2 mins  Check in with person next to you to clear up any of these terms- 1 min  Out to the floor…

 On this read, see if you can make some conclusions about the committee system…take 4 mins  How does the committee process influence the legislative obstacle course? Have at least two examples from the steps  Out to the floor…

 Last read…take 4 mins to find how leadership pushes the partisanship in the process…  How is leadership helping to kill bills?  Find how/where partisanship is visible in this process?  Out to the floor…

Are you ready to respond to the essential question again? Can you make an educated assessment now about our legislative process? Is this an effective legislative process? Use at least 3-4 pieces of evidence to support your thought process