What do you do as a Congressman?


LEARN ABOUT THE U.S. GOVERNMENT

 

&

 

WHAT I DO AS A CONGRESSMAN

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is the Constitution?

 

 

 

 

The Constitutional Convention met in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 25, 1787, and began the business of amending the Articles of Confederation (that was the agreement between all of the states at the time).  The Convention decided to draft a new Constitution based on the new principles they wanted to organize the country around to keep all of our people free.  One of the proposals was that the executive, judicial and legislative powers would be divided between three separate branches of government.  They also proposed that the legislative branch (called the Congress) be divided into two parts.

 

 

 

 

What does the Congress do?

 

 

 

 

The Constitution says that all of the legislative responsibility for our federal government will take place in the U.S. Congress.  There are two parts to the Congress – the Senate and the House of Representatives.  The main job of Congress (which is made up of 100 Senators and 435 Representatives from every state in the ) is writing bills and making laws.

 

 

 

 

What is a United States Representative?

 

 

 

 

Representatives are elected directly by the people of a certain segment of each state’s population (called a Congressional District).  I serve the people of the Seventh Congressional District of Georgia.  In the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. , I vote for and against bills and represent thousands of citizens of the state of Georgia who live in Gwinnett, Barrow, Walton, Newton, and Forsyth Counties.  Every two years, each Representative faces re-election on the same day (on election day in November in even numbered years).

 

 

 

 

What is a bill?

 

 

 

 

A bill is the form used for most legislation.  A bill that is introduced in the House of Representatives starts with “H.R.”, meaning “House of Representatives”, followed by a number.  Bills are presented to the President for action when approved in identical form by both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

 

 

What do you do with a bill once you have written it?

 

Any Representative in the House of Representatives may introduce a bill at any time while the House is in session by simply placing it in the “hopper” at the side of the Clerk’s desk in the Chamber of the House of Representatives.  The Representative who wrote the bill (called the sponsor) has to put his signature on the bill, then the Representative can work on getting other Representatives to support the bill (the additional supporters are called co-sponsors).

 

 

What does the Clerk do with the bill?

 

 

The bill is given its legislative number (for example, H.R. 25) by the Clerk, and then it is sent to at least one committee for review.  The bill is then printed, and everyone can read it (Representatives can review copies in Congress, and people across the can read it on the Internet, too).

 

 

What are committees?

 

 

A lot of the work in the House of Representatives is done in committees, made up of a number of Representatives concentrating on a specific legislative issue area.  There are a large number of committees in the House, each with its own job (for example, the House Natural Resources Committee has the job of reviewing issues about our nation’s forests and national parks).  I serve on the House Ways and Means Committee.  This committee is responsible for reviewing all tax and trade legislation.  When a bill is introduced by a Representative, it goes to a specific committee for more research, debate, hearing, and changes (or may be sent to an even smaller subcommittee in the main committee).

 

What are committee hearings?

 

The first step in the committee process is for committees to hold public hearings so that people can have a chance to talk about their views on a bill.  The committee will let everyone (Representatives and people across the country) know when they are going to hold a meeting, announcing the date, place and subject of any hearing it holds.  At a committee hearing, all the witnesses talk about the many different views on the bill, and all the Representatives on that Committee get to ask questions about the bill.

 

What do committees do after a hearing?

 

 

After hearings are done, the bill may be considered in another meeting called a “mark-up”.  All the Representatives on that committee study the bill and the information from the hearing and then offer amendments (changes to the bill).  The committee members then vote on any of these amendments.  If the committee passes the bill, they write a report (a Committee Report) that tells all 435 Representatives in the Congress what the bill is about and why they want the rest of the House to review it.

 

 

Where does a bill go after it is passed by a committee?

 

 

The bill needs to be voted on by all the Representatives if it is going to have a chance to become a law.  There are a couple of ways a bill can be considered by the whole House – some are simple, and some are very complex.  Consideration of a bill by all of the Representatives usually happens after the Committee on Rules decides on the guidelines (a rule) for talking about a bill on the House floor.  I previously served on the Rules Committee and went to the House floor often to speak about the details of a rule and how we would be considering certain bills.  A rule is a resolution that sets up how long we will talk about a bill (this is called floor debate) and how many changes can be made to the bill (this is called the amendment process).  Representatives on both sides of a bill divide up the time to talk about the bill.  After the debate is done and we have voted on any amendments, all the Representatives can vote on the final bill (this is called final passage).  In some cases, Representatives that are against the bill can have a vote to change part of the bill or send it back to a committee (this is called a “motion to recommit”).

 

 

How do you vote in the House of Representatives?

 

When we vote on amendments and bills, and all other votes in the House, we can use an electronic voting system which registers each Representative’s vote and shows how each Representative voted on the wall of the House. These votes are called "Yea/Nay" votes or recorded votes ("Yea" means a Representative voted for the bill, and "Nay" means a Representative voted against it).  Votes in the House may also be done by voice vote if a bill is popular and no one asks for a recorded electronic vote.

 

 

Does the bill go to the President after final passage in the House?

 

 

As we saw in the Constitution answer, there are two parts to the Congress – the House and the Senate.  Actually, a bill must pass both of these in the exact same form before it can be sent to the President for him to sign into law.  If the Senate changes the bill, it can come back to the House for us to agree to the Senate changes, or we can ask a number of Representatives and Senators to meet together and agree on the bill (this is called a “conference committee”).  After they solve any of the parts of the bill that we disagree on, the bill heads back to be voted on by both the House and Senate.

 

 

What occurs after the House and Senate agree on a bill?

 

 

After a bill is passed in identical form by both the House and Senate, it is sent to the President.  If the President likes the bill, he can sign the bill into law, which makes it the law for the whole country.  If the President opposes the bill, he can veto it and send it back to Congress.