The Pour Over Today - How a Bill ACTUALLY Becomes a Law TPO Explains I 11.22.25

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

Readers of The Pour Over pick a topic to have explained, and Jason and Kathleen have to get Joe to understand it in less than 30 minutes… This week, they’re explaining how a bill actually becomes a law. Looking to support us? You can choose to pay ⁠⁠here⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Check out The Pour Over's Gift Guide!⁠⁠ Check out our sponsors! We actually use and enjoy every single one. ⁠⁠Cru⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Safe House Project⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Upside⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Mosh⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Life Application Study Bible⁠⁠ ⁠⁠LMNT⁠⁠ ⁠⁠She Reads Truth⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Quince⁠⁠ ⁠⁠CCCU⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Surfshark⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Theology in the Raw⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Holy Post⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Not Just Sunday Podcast⁠⁠ The Pour Over’s Newsletters: ⁠⁠The Pour Over⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Decaf⁠⁠ ⁠⁠News Health⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Praying the News

Today's episode is brought to you by our lead sponsor, Safe House Project. All right, Jason, you did it. You slaved away and made us these famous caramel, caramel, however you want to say it, bars. Yeah. Yeah. I actually lazily decided not to make it last night. And then Hannah brought them into the office because she heard that I was like, last night, I actually put on the calendar and make caramel bars and totally forgot about it. And then she was like, why does the calendar say make caramel bars?

And then I saw it you had text to me. It's like, okay, let's go see if we have everything. And we didn't. And then she surprised us this this morning. So these are, admittedly, a few hours old. And they're really better fresh out of the oven. But I'll take a bye to this with you guys. I tried to have one fresh out of the oven.

Yeah, no. Wouldn't let you in. We needed on camera, the first experience. Folks, this is the first taste that Kathleen and I are trying Jason's mom's Sherry gets all the credit, her famous caramel bars. That's right. I had a LaCroix. Fine.

All right. Should we do it? Cheers, guys. They're a little crumbly. Cheers. Yum. Where's the big influencer reaction? You got to like,

the eyes get big. You really start nodding. I'm supposed to tap it with my fingers? Those are legit. Mm-hmm. Hannah did an amazing job. Yeah. That's great.

Wow. Is this going to become like a food? Our cold opens will just be us taking bites of food. Trying different things. Man. They just slap. Always. Did you finishers?

Oh, yeah. Wow. You got to eat them fast before they go stale. Stale? I think I have time. Well done. We always quote the office when it's the episode where he's like with the girls at the mall and he's eating the Froyo and has it like loaded up. He's like, I can't believe this has no calories.

Hannah and I quote that all the time whenever we just eat anything that's good. I can't believe this has no calories. Hello and welcome to another episode of TPO Explains. I'm Joe, podcast producer here at the Porover, and I'm here with Jason, our founder and editor-in-chief, and Kathleen, our managing editor. So here's the idea behind the show. Our readers share which topics they want us to explore,

and then we bring that to the podcast. Today's winner, how a bill actually becomes a law. That's right. Schoolhouse Rock has lied to all of us. Wow, that's a bold opener Yeah It's not totally true They presented a very

Optimistic view Catchy Catchy Yeah I'm just Yeah Joe Yes I'm going to be very vulnerable

Here at the open I feel like I should know This I was going to show you We're going to show you the video Oh I feel like I should know this well, but embarrassingly, I don't.

So that'll be great for the purposes of this episode, but just being truly honest, this will probably be very embarrassing for me. Hey, we were talking about it earlier in the office, asked someone else. And it's like, do you know how a bill becomes a law? And they're like, not even a little bit. So I think it's a, we can all, we can all hum the tune, you know, but the, you know, you remember, I'm just a bill. And you remember now I'm a law.

But the whole middle section is a little. fuzzy for people and that's really that's that's really the important part yeah the fuzzy part so should we I think we embarrass you what how do you how do you how do you how do you think a bill becomes a law just take a take a toss okay all right here we go so someone drafts up a bill that they're interested in becoming a law and so they literally have to write it like line by line. And then it would need to pass a certain amount of votes in the House. And once it does that, it goes into the Senate and needs a certain amount of votes to pass the Senate step. And then it goes to the president to sign into law. Good. Could you sing that? Honestly, I think like really,

really solid broad strokes. And that is kind of what Schoolhouse Rock taught us. all. Super high level. A bill is drafted. It's then introduced in either the House or the Senate. It goes to a committee and then it passes through committee and then is voted on by the whole chamber. Then it goes to the other chamber and goes to committee and then it goes to the whole vote. And then it's sent to the president who either signs or vetoes it. If they veto it, it goes back to Congress and they can override the veto. That is, yeah. That's the super high level. The details, when you look at how any law actually kind of navigated through Congress, it is almost always different than that. So here's a question. You said, someone writes a bill. Who? Who writes the bill?

any of our elected officials I think probably in reality it's one of their their employees that they have staffers staffers exactly it's not I don't expect the senator or the the representative to physically be the one typing it out yeah I mean anybody can have the idea for a bill which was interesting, like to read about where all the ideas come from. It could be something that a representative, like, promised their constituents and they were getting elected, or it could be something that maybe the president has said, hey, this needs to be done. So, like, the, where the idea can originate comes from a lot of different directions. But any member can consult with the legislative council within either chamber and have a bill written. Yeah, that, and that's the process

of like turning it from an idea into the legalese, but anyone can draft a bill. You could draft a bill. The issue is getting the bill presented and a, like you said, an elected lawmaker has to actually present, present the bill. And so in the House, actually, Kathleen, I'll let you do this. You've been so excited about it. I really have been excited. So whether it's the House or the Senate, there's a couple different, you know, there's different, two different, I guess, paths to presenting your bill.

So if you're in the House, any member of the House of Representatives at any time without permission can go up and they take their bill that they've gotten advice on how to write and they drop it into a wooden box called the Hopper. Wow. At any time, they just drop it in. The person who drops it in has to have signed it and they have to like validate that it's their seat. signature. So you can't, like, drop in a bill on behalf of someone else. But you can have, as long as it's a public bill, you can have a bunch of co-sponsors. And then the bill gets a number and goes to a committee. And then in the Senate, you can also have co-sponsors. You can also, like, by request, suggest a co-sponsor, which could be, like, a member of cabinet or the president.

And then in the Senate, you just introduced the bill by presenting it to one of the clerks at the presiding officers desk. So it's a little bit more formal. And a senator has to do that. Like, you can't send your staff or to go. The senator has to bring the bill and say, hey, this is, I want this to be considered. And in the House, they, it's not customary at all anymore to even say anything about the bill when you drop it into the hopper. But on the Senate, you can just like kind of make a formal declaration about like what the measure is and like introduce it to the floor. So let's talk about these committees. Any notion of what the committees are?

There's a judicial committee. There is? And I know that because Iowa's Senator Chuck Grassley chairs the judicial committee. And he has for the last 200 years. We recently voted him back into another six-year term. Yes, so there are different committees. And there are committees in the House. There are committees in the Senate.

And the... And joint committees. There are joint committees, yes. And the general idea is there are too many laws presented and the work of Congress is too significant to have the entirety of each body consider every bill or potential legislation. And so they have these committees that specialize. And so the bill goes from the hopper or the clerk. and then is put into kind of the appropriate committee. And this is where almost every bill dies.

Yeah. And, yeah, the process, so the committee researches the issue, holds hearings with experts, debates, and amends the bill, and decides whether or not the bill should advance. And those are all the things that can do. You can also have subcommittees. Yes. And probably sub subcommittees, you know.

So it's a way to. manage the workload, but my understanding is that most the time a bill goes to committee and like the chair of the committee looks at it and goes, that bill's stupid. And I'm just never going to bring it up. Like, there's never going to be a hearing about it. There's never going to be debate about it. It's, I acknowledged that it existed. And that is where it goes to die. Dead on arrival. Dead on arrival. Yep. Hey, it's Emily from the pourover. The holidays are meant forgiving. But let's be honest. This time of year gets expensive. Between road trips to see family hosting dinners and a few too many,

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so that you can really look at all of it. How many, roughly how many pieces of legislature do you think? Legislation. Wait, what's the legislature? I think legislature is like the, oh, man, we need to look it up. It's like the- So the legislature, which is the process. Wait, no, legislation.

I don't know. A legislator. That is the person. Legislation. That's right. Yes. I think a legislature is like. Congress. I don't know. We don't know that one. Legislation.

How much, how many pieces of legislation do you suppose get introduced, I don't know, I guess. In a year? In a, in a congressional session, which is two years. Wow. Spoiler alert. Yeah, I know. Joe, how many years do you think send congressional? Is it like two years? Nailed it.

Yeah. Okay, what's the number on average? In a two-year period, let's go 500. I was trying to crunch the numbers before this, but somebody really rushed me. So it's anywhere, the last 25 years, anywhere from 9,000 to 15,000. Wow. I saw 10,000, yeah. And about 60, well, I guess, okay, there's about a 60-40 split on where they originate.

Any guesses on which chamber? proposes the most legislation. Let's go 60 House of Representatives. Yeah, that's actually more evenly split than I thought. I know. I mean, there's 435 representatives. By law. By law, I think by the Constitution, which is law.

Well, it's the supreme law of the land. That's right. Law is the important word there. So there's, not only there's like over, there's, you know, way more representatives, but then it also is just kind of, it feels like the vibe of the house that you would, a little bit more frantic. Very shadrachy. Yes, yes, that you would do more. Okay. So of this, of that number, how, what percentage do you think roughly gets passed?

So of the 5,000 to 15,000. Yeah. Let's go back to 500. I don't know the percent. It's roughly one to two percent. 100 to 200 every two years become law. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it was like 7 percent sometimes, but less than 10 percent in the last 25 years.

And so just to like, where do the other 10,000 bills go or why were they even proposed? And best I could tell, it's like they were, they were, proposed with no hope. Like, they were proposed to virtue signal or to, like, I told you I would bring this up. Exactly, to fulfill a campaign promise or to help fundraise and say, you know, it's like, I tried to hold them accountable or whatever, but there was never. Is this where lobbyists come in? Lobbyists help draft the bills.

So, again, talking about where the bills originate, it is typically a staffer that actually puts keyboard to computer screen. pen to paper um but they uh they will talk with lobbyists and other experts and stuff they'll i mean it's frequently the congressman or the congresswoman that's like hey i want to bill about this and then the staffer goes and meets with different special interest groups or experts and things like that when i was looking up the numbers there was some like i don't it said that i want to say it used the number of words it was like since this year congress has introduced three to four million words of legislation, and that that number hasn't changed, but the number of bills has.

So they're just making bigger bills. So I thought that was interesting. Like you might have seen 25,000 bills, you know, 50 years ago. And now it's roughly half that. But it's not that there's less words. They're just bigger bills. Well, and so that that's one of the things, yeah, to what has changed and practically how things become law is there's certain, there are certain things that Congress needs to pass

every year, like the budget. And so what will end up happening is instead of proposing a standalone bill to accomplish something, it is, you have a better chance of success of having that concept or idea tacked on as an amendment to this bill that absolutely will pass. It's just a question of whether or not you can get it included. Sneak it in. Yeah. And so you end up with these omnibus, like huge, huge bills that are presented at the 11th hour. and no one's read and then you're like figuring out after the fact it's like wow okay this is law now we have to do this weird thing that was thrown in sneaky okay so we have it's drafted it's introduced it goes to committee um and does it have to go to committee no great okay so that's a great uh next question let's see how do we want to frame well we'll just say does it have to go to committee no um the I thought the answer is yes. Okay.

So this is, this is what was so fascinating to me is the, we talked a little bit about how like the chair of the committee holds a ton of power. Because if they just decide not to hold a vote in the committee, nothing happens. There are mechanisms to skirt around that, one of which actually just happened with the Epstein files. But it's super rare. So if a bill is in committee in the House, then to get it out of committee without the chair's approval requires 218 votes a majority of the entire House. So you basically have to present this separate resolution to say that person is like not doing their job. And so there's political like political implications. You're really calling out leadership and all this other stuff and saying we need to.

override this person. And so it's super rare. Then the other, it doesn't have to go to committee. But the way that it would not go to committee is if the speaker of the house basically enables it to just skip the committee. The speaker controls the rules committee, which is like how the house of representatives operates. And so it was a little sketchy, but it seemed like basically they just

create a rule that says like, hey, this bill isn't going to go to committee. And they can basically do that unilaterally. So in practice, there are ways to force a vote, to get something out of committee or force a vote on a bill against the will of the speaker or something else. In practice, it like almost never happens. But in the Senate, what just happened in the Senate? Is that what you were going to talk about with Epstein? No, so that happened in the House. Okay. And then in the Senate, they didn't even vote. The bill was just basically they said, hey, we have this bill the house just approved it with just one nay i'd like to oh my gosh i'm gonna he said it in a very like technical way but basically said i'd like to propose that we pass it with no amendments

that we um the term is unanimous consent yes that we pass it with unanimous consent so it did not go to they didn't even vote it did not go to committee they didn't hold a vote it's not like okay we officially have a 100 to zero vote it just is passed with unanimous a misconsent. Yes, which is a 100 to zero vote. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the difference between the House and the Senate.

Do you want to take that? Sure. Where do you want to start? Well, I think we just keep it pretty high level. Yeah. I mean, the biggest, when we're talking about how a bill becomes law, aside from the hopper, the biggest difference is going to be how much discussion happens over that bill. So in the House, they have a lot of rules over how long you can debate a measure.

You can talk about it for a certain number of time. I think I saw it maybe an hour for some. So I think this is something that the speaker controls. So it changes like every two years or more than that if the speaker decides elsewhere. But the general rule is like there's a finite amount of time and then all the representatives in the House are forced to pick aside. Yeah. And then vote right? Yeah.

So in the Senate, though, there is an unlimited time to debate. And that's where you get filibusters. You can only end the discussion of a measure by a vote for cloture where you would need 60 people to vote yay to move. So filibusters do not exist in the House of Representatives. Correct. It is a Senate thing. And it's no longer the— Philibusted.

It's no longer the Mr. Smith goes to Washington. You have to like keep talking the whole time. It's called, I think, a silent filibuster. And it's basically the idea is that the debate is continuous until 60 senators vote to end the debate. So that vote is not voting in favor of the measure. It closes the debate. And then you have to have the formal vote where a simple majority will win. But you can understand, like, if you're on the minority side and you don't want it to pass, you just let the debate go on forever.

And that's another reason. This is another place where bills go to die is the Senate because they'll get proposed. They'll get passed by the majority party in the House and then go over to the Senate, which is designed to be a slower, more thoughtful place of, hey, we don't force you. Like, you've had enough time. We force you to pick a side saying, take as much time as you need, tell you feel. feel good that this should be a law of the land. Human trafficking isn't just an over-their problem. It's happening right here in the U.S.

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Another difference. So every two years, the House of Representatives will adopt new rules unlike the opening day of that congressional session. But the Senate considers itself a continuing body. And so it operates under continuous standing rules. Oh, I didn't know that. All right.

What did we miss? Okay. We mentioned that the Senate has its own rules. It can amend its own rules. It's actually most of what Congress people do is bills, making laws. There's also joint resolutions where they work together to approve things. They would introduce a bill in both chambers at the same time. For example, they could do amendments to the conference.

constitution that way, and uniquely, that doesn't require presidential signature. And then there's also, like, other resolutions that they would do that are, like, amending their own rules. But there are some things that have to start in the House or the Senate or, like, unique jobs that they play. Yeah. So I think there's something with revenue that has to start in the House. Raising revenue, which is old talk for taxes.

Yeah. And then for impeachments, uniquely, the House has to bring the articles of impeachment, but the Senate is who, like, runs the trial on impeachment. So, like, you would be, the articles of impeachment would be brought by the House, but the Senate would be who would be actually voting on whether somebody was getting impeached. Yeah. All right. Are we ready for some fun facts? Yeah, I do have a fun-ish fact. Let's do it. Funnish Facts. 90 seconds. Funnish facts. Okay, there is a parliamentarian in both the House and the Senate that is not an elected official. It is someone appointed by the Speaker of the House and by the majority leader. And they are a nonpartisan advisor, basically on the rules and procedures of that chamber. So they also don't necessarily stick around just for that majority leader or the Speaker's term.

there have only been six total parliamentarians in the House and eight total in the Senate and like the first one in the House served for 46 years so talk about like you've seen Congress people come and go and you're just like this is how we do things so yeah right now I think it's a guy named Jason in the House and the first woman parliamentarian ever is currently serving in the Senate so

very cool funnish funnish yeah definitely Absolutely. Well done. Jason, do you have any fun facts? No, although I will say this was such a fun, it was a just enormous topic. And there were so many, like there are tons of fun facts that we could say that feel like they're actually just entire other episodes. And Kathleen and I had to commit to saying, if it has to do with a bill becoming a law, we can talk about it. So even like my fun fact, kind of a gray area. This is a super basic question, but I think we missed it. Technically, how many votes in the House of Reps and how many votes in the Senate for a bill to pass? Yep. So technically, a simple majority in both. So that's 218, assuming there's a full 435 in the House and then 51 in the Senate.

But the Senate, that's kind of, there's the asterisk of to close out the debate. about it. Yeah, requires 60 votes. So practically it's a simple majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate. And there are, that is for almost everything to amend the Constitution requires two-thirds to over- Is impeachment? I'm pretty sure it's two-thirds. Okay.

And then to override a veto is two-thirds. So there are a few exceptions, but generally. All right, guys, what Christian perspectives do you have today? Mine was just choose humility because when you started, I started looking at everything that goes into these people's jobs and even, like, as I got on rabbit trails, like, where they live, how often are they away from their family? What are the different, you know, steps they have to take to introduce legislation? And I think it's so easy to get caught up in the rhetoric of like, these people. Washington. They don't know what they're doing. And I don't know. I'm going to choose humility and hope that they are, their hearts in the right place, hope that they're trying to do what's best

for their constituents and, yeah, just choose humility when thinking through it. That's a great. It's a rather unenviable position a lot of the time. So, yeah, mine was just keeping an eternal perspective. All of this felt so cool and important. And, like, Like, these are laws and you can amend the Constitution and this is such a big deal. And to just remember that to God, it's not a very big deal. Like, this is a, the United States, relatively small deal. There's just, there's been a long time and a lot of countries. And so to keep the perspective of this is still a manmade thing and it's not that big of a deal when we are considering eternity.

Awesome. Thanks, guys. Well, thanks to everyone for tuning in to another episode of TPO Explains. As a reminder, you can watch this episode on YouTube and Spotify. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time.

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