With all of the excitement that surrounded the first “Bailout bill” and now the furor over the new Stimulus bill I looked through our archives and saw that no one had yet discussed what a bill is and how it becomes a law. The point of this post is purely educational. There are no opinions here regarding the current stimulus package or Geithner’s announcement yesterday that he needs $TWO TRILLION MORE. I’m sorry, was I shouting? In keeping with the main premise of Inside Government – to help educate and inform the public – the following is a detailed look at bills. But, first – a blast from the past for those of you who might remember School House Rock:

Pretty cool, huh? Well, that is a very simplified presentation of how bills become law, but, it is on target and most of you probably remember seeing it. Now we move on to greater detail…

US Capitol Building at Night

While the big news of the week has been the historic election of Barack Obama as the first African American President of the United States, there was another compelling story going on election night, and that was whether or not the Democrats would pick up enough seats in the Senate to gain a filibuster-proof supermajority, or a total of 60 Senate Seats. While the election night commentators kept Americans up-to-date on various Senate races in key states, they never really explained why having a filibuster-proof majority was important or what exactly a filibuster was anyway. This post will attempt to answer all those questions regarding the filibuster, and more.