Congressional Legislative Process

Prior to this trip, I understood at least the basic procedures of the Congressional legislative process. However, it wasn’t until after I participated in the Potomac Summer Institute that I realized just how little I actually knew because each of the steps in the legislative process is nowhere near as simple as a textbook may make them seem.
A standard American federal politics class will teach that proposed bills start in a committee made up of a subset of the members of Congress, and if the bill gets approved by the committee, it will move on to the floor for further debate, amendments, and voting. During this trip, I learned that this seemingly straightforward committee system had numerous quirks and nuances under the surface. For example, due to the sheer magnitude of the number of bills that get proposed each session, representatives have developed tactics to increase the chance that the bill that they are sponsoring at least gets looked at. As one of the Congressmen that we met with told us, if a representative proposes a bill that doesn’t fall within one of his or her own committees, there’s no chance that the bill will get looked at unless that representative has a buddy on that committee that they can either ask to cosponsor the bill or at least confirm in advance that they will support that piece of legislation. Also in regards to committee membership, supposedly members of Congress will try to get on committees that correlate with their personal areas of expertise

However, as mentioned by Rep. Beto O’Rourke, most representatives are motivated to try and “upgrade” to a committee that deals with issues that have “big money”