Description
The point of this project was to teach us about the inner workings of the lawmaking process. We began the process by looking at a brief overview of what a bill must go through in order to be passed, from when its written, all the way to being signed or rejected by the president. Once we understood the basics we were assigned current senators and a committee to take part in. I was chosen to be Dean Heller from Nevada and to be on the finance committee.
Once these positions were assigned, we were to team up with one other senator of the same committee to write a piece of legislation. I chose to remain within my party and co-author legislation with Pat Toomey represented by Ian Duthie. After additional research on our senators opinions and the fiscal cliff, we initially decided to write legislation on the reduction of military spending. Then the ISIS attacks on Paris happened. As we were doing the entire project in the current context we decided a military reduction act would be nearly impossible to pass and instead chose to write a bill to enact the partial privatization of Social Security in order to prevent it from running out of funding in the coming decades. Unfortunately this bill was not selected to be voted on however it is written below.
When the bills were selected, we entered a process of preparing for the actual model senate exhibition. In the next few days we learned parliamentary procedure, made senate “sports” cards, and even did a practice exhibition with mock bills. Then came the real deal. The final exhibition was divided into two parts, one three-hour section to propose amendments and one four hour section to debate on and vote for or against the bills. After this process we ended up passing a financial bill that did just what Ian and I had deemed impossible, reduce the military’s unnecessary funding during the aftermath of a terrorist attack. This bill was then signed into law by president Obama represented by Nick Terasevitch.
Once these positions were assigned, we were to team up with one other senator of the same committee to write a piece of legislation. I chose to remain within my party and co-author legislation with Pat Toomey represented by Ian Duthie. After additional research on our senators opinions and the fiscal cliff, we initially decided to write legislation on the reduction of military spending. Then the ISIS attacks on Paris happened. As we were doing the entire project in the current context we decided a military reduction act would be nearly impossible to pass and instead chose to write a bill to enact the partial privatization of Social Security in order to prevent it from running out of funding in the coming decades. Unfortunately this bill was not selected to be voted on however it is written below.
When the bills were selected, we entered a process of preparing for the actual model senate exhibition. In the next few days we learned parliamentary procedure, made senate “sports” cards, and even did a practice exhibition with mock bills. Then came the real deal. The final exhibition was divided into two parts, one three-hour section to propose amendments and one four hour section to debate on and vote for or against the bills. After this process we ended up passing a financial bill that did just what Ian and I had deemed impossible, reduce the military’s unnecessary funding during the aftermath of a terrorist attack. This bill was then signed into law by president Obama represented by Nick Terasevitch.