How do laws really get made?
Once the House or Senate passes a bill, the bill does not go directly to the president. Both chambers of Congress must vote to approve the bill in identical form before it goes from Capitol Hill to the White House for the president’s signature.
A bill first passed by the House must be voted on by the Senate and vice versa. If the bill is changed in any way by the second chamber, the House and Senate will have to work out a compromise version. This often happens informally, and leaders from the two chambers iron out their differences and come to an agreement on any amendments.
About 20 percent of the time, however, especially with major or controversial legislation, House and Senate leaders cannot reach agreement informally. In such cases, the bill is sent to a joint conference committee. The task of this committee is to work out a compromise that a majority of lawmakers in both chambers can accept and that the president will sign into law.
The speaker of the House and the presiding officer of the Senate appoint members to a conference committee. These members are known as conferees. Typically, each chamber appoints about a half dozen conferees, mainly senior members of the committees involved with the bill. The conferees bargain face to face. To reach agreement, they may heavily revise a bill or even rewrite it completely. For this reason, conference committees are sometimes called “the third house of Congress.”
An agreement reached by a conference committee must have the backing of a majority of each chamber’s conferees. That agreement, known as a conference report, goes back to the House and Senate for an up-or-down vote. This type of vote means that the revised bill must be adopted or rejected as is, with no further amendments, by a majority of the full House and Senate. Only if both chambers approve it can the bill be sent to the president.
Once the bill is delivered to the White House, the president has ten days (not counting Sundays) to do one of the following:
A bill that has been vetoed by the president is delivered back to the first chamber that passed it. That chamber may decide that the bill cannot be saved. Or it may try to override, or cancel, the presidential veto. Historically, only a small percentage of bills approved by Congress have been vetoed.
Overriding a presidential veto is not easy. Two-thirds of the members present in each chamber must vote in favor of saving the legislation. If the first chamber fails to override the veto, the measure dies there. Otherwise, it moves on to the second chamber for a vote. If two-thirds of the lawmakers in the second chamber also approve the override, the bill becomes a law without the president’s signature.
Congressional overrides are more likely when the president belongs to one party and Congress is controlled by the other, or when Congress and the president clash over a particular issue. Both conditions existed during Andrew Johnson’s presidency in the 1860s. Johnson was a southern Democrat, while Congress was controlled by northern Republicans. Congress also disagreed with Johnson’s plans for reconstructing the South after the Civil War.
Under these unusual circumstances, Congress was able to override 15 of Johnson’s 21 vetoes. In contrast, during his four terms as president, Franklin Roosevelt vetoed a record number of 372 bills. Congress managed to override only 9 of his vetoes.