May 4, 2020 3 min read

This week (May 5) in 1789, our first Congress passed our first law, the Oath Act, which prescribes the oath of office incoming government officials must take – the exception being the president, whose oath is prescribed in Article II, Sec. 1, of the Constitution. The Oath Act passed quickly, the government being small and the legislation being simple; its entirety was the instruction that government officials must “solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support the Constitution of the United States.”

Since then, the government being gargantuan and the citizenry being some 350 million people with different priorities they want encoded into law, getting legislation passed and signed into law is more complicated.

First, one must introduce a bill, which only members of Congress can do. After that, a first draft is written, and the bill’s sponsors begin seeking support.

Next, it must be reviewed by the relevant committees (including the House and Senate Rules Committee). Next are hearings in which opinions of the bill are expressed, thereby identifying supporters and opponents. Next is a bill’s markup, in which the language is edited, revised, amended, etc., to address those opinions and make the bill broad-based enough to achieve passage.

Next is adding the bill to the House and Senate calendar, which is complicated because the House and Senate have separate calendars that often differently determine the order in which bills are considered. When the bill is voted on, in the House it must receive a majority of at least 218 votes, and in the Senate 51 (if a 50-50 tie occurs the vice president, as the Senate’s president, can break it). And in both the House and Senate, members have three choices in how they vote: “Aye (Yes),” “Nay (No)” or “Present (Abstain).”

And even assuming the bill is passed in the House and Senate, further compromise (deal making) via a House-Senate Conference is necessary because the House and Senate answer to different constituencies – House members answer to the majority voters in their 435 different congressional districts; senators answer to majorities in their 50 different states – meaning the original House and Senate bills will be very different. But before legislation goes to the president both must approve it.

Finally, once (if) that happens, the president signs it into law, or vetoes it with a written explanation of his objections. That leaves Congress three choices: Incorporate the president’s objections into a new bill, attempt to override his veto by a two-thirds majority, or let the bill die.

It has been nicknamed, somewhat appropriately, “Sausage making,” because lots of ingredients, many of them unwholesome, go into it, and because, like making sausage, you really don’t want to know how it’s done.

Bruce G. Kauffmann’s e-mail address is bruce@historylessons.net/.