A Political Secret, and How You Can Use it to Your Advantage
Most bills in Congress live short, unremarkable lives.
At the time of this writing, 18,470 bills have been introduced this Congress, and 2% have become law. You’re more likely to find a four-leaf clover in Washington, D.C. than a bill that’s passed.
Congress, in its infinite wisdom, has given the word “Congress" three meanings:
It is a physical place where politicians pass (or don’t) bills.
It is a legislative body defined in Article 1 of the Constitution.
And it is a unit of time: a Congress is two years.
After a bill’s been introduced, it’s sent over to the Committee that oversees the bill’s issue, known in the biz as the Committee of jurisdiction.
And for a bill to become law, it needs to first pass out of that Committee, meaning the majority of Committee members vote yes on that bill.
Now here is a dirty little secret nobody tells you: Committees are where bills go to die.
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This Congress, over 2,000 bills have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee. There is no way that Committee is going to have a hearing and vote on all of those bills. The House Foreign Affairs Committee has a mere 980 bills, and the vast majority of those will never see the light of day.
When a politician says, “I’ve got a bill to solve this gargantuan problem,” I have a little pressure test I apply to see if the bill’s a work horse designed to trot through the legislative process or a show pony designed to get attention, but not action.
Does the politician sit on the Committee that oversees that bill?
A great place to find out is Congress.gov. That tells you what Committee a bill has been referred to and what Committees politicians sit on.
If the politician does sit on the Committee of jurisdiction, she’s got some heft to pluck the bill out of the hundreds or thousands under their purview and get this one moving.
If she doesn’t sit on the Committee, she might be unserious about passing this bill. Because to get that dang bill out of Committee, she’s gonna have to call in a whole lotta favors to get the Committee to cast an eye on her legislation.
That’s awfully hard to do. Sisyphean, you could say.
But most folks don’t know this little “Committees are where bills go to die" secret. And most politicians know that what folks do know is that Congress is stupendously unproductive. So when the politician’s bill doesn’t pass, the politician can blame Congress for it, rather than cop to the fact that they never had a plan for the bill to become law anyway.
Congress wastes a lot of time, but you need not. Don’t spend one minute of it advocating for or against unserious bills. Save that valuable time for the serious work of moving our world forward.
Know someone who calls their Senators all the time? Why not forward this along so they don’t spend one second on bills that are DOA.