Be Informed on the Legislative Process - Part I

 Part I:  How can a DKG member follow current legislation?

Bills that are before the U.S. Congress can be found at www.congress.gov. On this site, look for a section for the Senate and a section for the House of Representatives. For the House, find the link to bills being considered for the week. When you click on this, a link comes up displaying these bills. Bills for the House of Representatives start with H.R. while Senate bills start with S. On this site the title of the bill is given along with the sponsoring legislator and the text of the bill. The easiest way to locate House bills is to go to the section labeled House of Representatives and then click on bills to be considered.  For the Senate go to the top of the page on the right-hand side titled “Active Legislation.”  Clicking on this will take you to the senate.gov site where bills are listed. The Senate site gives pertinent information about bills in both the House and Senate.

The easiest way to locate education bills is to use the advanced search feature on the top of the left-hand side of the page. Scroll down to where it says “current legislation” and type in “education.”  All of the education bills will appear, and you can read a summary of the bill, a list of cosponsors, the names of committees that have heard the bill, and the text of the bill itself.