Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with senate

Explain (in an easy to understand way) Budget Reconciliation in the Senate? And its impact on health care reform this year?

paulinsanjuan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 04:23:43 -0800

Explain (in an easy to understand way) Budget Reconciliation in the Senate? And its impact on health care reform this year? Here are a couple articles that explain it to some degree and a page from wikipedia. I'm looking for a single step by step answer that outlines the process, the reasoning behind the process and its impact on Obama-led health care reform.

Also, the Washington Post article says "...refused to authorize the use of reconciliation for his plan to cap greenhouse gas emissions." Why not?

How to find the real dirt on how a bill actually becomes a law

croutonsupafreak — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:56:54 -0800

How can I research how a particular act of the U.S. Congress came into existence - with as much detail as is possible about how it changed from proposal to final act and how it was influenced along the way? I don't just want the language of the law, the bill's House and Senate sponsors and the breakdown of how everyone voted. I'd like to know what committees it went through, any available minutes/transcripts from those committees, how it was amended as it worked its way through consideration, and who is responsible making the amendments to the bill.

And beyond the specific act that I'm interested in (from 2003), I'd like to know how to research this stuff in general. It need not all exist on the public Internet. I'm not averse to subscribing to databases (within financial limits) or heading to the library.

Recognize the Template?

fingo — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:07:22 -0800

Two political candidates have identical websites. Did one rip another off, or are they both using the same template? I was researching the third party candidates for the Virginia Senate seat that's up in November, and I noticed that the websites of Libertarian William Redpath and Virginia Independent Green Gail Parker(warning: AMAZING jingle plays when you load the page) look exactly the same.

Does anyone recognize this as a premade template, or did one candidate rip off the other? The navigation bar is in flash, which leads me to believe that the source for this exists somewhere, but I don't know how to find it.

As a U.S. Senator, I run an organization with a yearly budge of $_ and _ employees.

Xalf — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 10:11:50 -0800

What size organization does a U.S. Senator run? All this talk of U.S. Senators having no "executive experience" seems a little silly to me. It's my impression that each senator runs a sizable operation with an office in Washington and several offices spread around their home states (just looking at big states, Cornyn of Texas has 7, Clinton of New York has 9, but Feinstein of California has only 4). I found salary info, but I can't seem to find hard numbers on how many people each senate office employs and what their yearly budgets are. Bonus points if you can find the same information for members of the House of Representatives.

Were can I find a list of the wealth of the members of the US Senate?

mac-way — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 15:40:39 -0800

Were can I find a list of the wealth of the current members of the US Senate?

Illegal Immigrants in College

madmamasmith — Sat, 22 Mar 2008 18:04:22 -0800

Can anyone tell me the percentage of children of illegal immigrants who attend college? Specifically in Texas. We are arguing the HB 104 (in state tuition bill) in my government class and I need to know how many children of illegal immigrants who were not born in the US actually attend institutions of higher education....

How do I know if my elected representatives are doing a good job?

cmiller — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:35:51 -0800

How can I, a US citizen, be more informed about my lawmakers' decisions and whether they're doing a good job? I have an example that I wonder about intensely, today's Senate Intelligence Committee meeting. I think the telecom companies who helped the government wiretap us without warrants should be held responsible. The Bush administration doesn't. The Senate has a bill in review that gives retroactive immunity to any criminal activity by the telecom companies.

I'm lucky that one of my senators,Bill Nelson (FL), is on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which met today "in a closed session" to review that very bill. I called his office yesterday to express my ideas and explain why it's a bad idea to let telcom off the hook.

Well the committee meeting is over and another senator managed to put a serious road-block in front of the bill, but I want to know what my senator did to stop it, if anything. But, how?

Is there some effort like what the UK has in They Work For You . com, but for US citizens? How can that huge mess at Capital Hill be less opaque to us common men? How can I know whether my representative is worthy of my vote?

How to get into Senate hearings?

mmf — Sat, 28 Jul 2007 03:45:36 -0800

How can a regular citizen get in to see Senate hearings? I have found rules for reporters explaining how they can get credentials, but not for us regular folks. I assume it would be harder to get into high-profile hearings like the recent AG performances, but I would like to try if it is possible.

Is there a really good schedule for upcoming activities in the U.S. Senate available online?

fugitivefromchaingang — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 08:46:24 -0800

Is there a really good schedule for upcoming activities in the U.S. Senate available online? Senate.gov just doesn't seem to have a schedule for the upcoming weeks. There's a bit of one, a "tentative" 2007 Legislation schedule, but it only says when the Senate is in session, not which bills are going to be introduced, considered, and voted on on which days.

Is there a schedule available that actually states what business the Senate will be taking up on what days? I only need one that covers the next few months. Thanks, guys.

did we win the senate or not?

petsounds — Wed, 08 Nov 2006 16:18:05 -0800

How come they won't call Virginia for the democrats? How come MSNBC and CNN all the other networks called Montana for the democrats this morning where Tester only has a 2,000 vote advantage, but still won't call Virginia where Webb has around 8,000 more? Is it just a matter of percentages?

contacting elected officials

chefscotticus — Sun, 30 Jul 2006 11:05:07 -0800

Is there an online tool that simplifies writing similar letters to each of one's elected officials? When NPR was pushing it's listeners to contact Congress a while back (to support more NPR funding), it had a tool on its webpage that allowed you to write a letter online, and then by inputting your home address, get that letter sent individually to each of your elected representatives, with their respective titles inserted as appropriate (Dear [senator/rep name here]...).

There are lots of sites out there that will give me a listing of my representatives, but i want to find a tool that allows me to write an email/letter only once and have individualized versions sent to the officials i select.

My googling has failed me -- is there anything like this out there?

How do you track legislation without bill numbers?

shivohum — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 20:07:18 -0800

How do you track U.S. federal legislation for which bill numbers -- either of the house record (H.R.) or Senate (S.) variety -- have not yet been assigned? In the debate about the recent network neutrality amendment to a house bill (the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006"), I noticed that it was extraordinarily difficult to find the bill itself on any of the normal bill tracking websites like Govtrack or Thomas.

It was difficult enough finding the bill's name mentioned in the articles about the network neutrality amendment. Clearly the article's authors assume their readers are not interested in such "technical" information. But I found it ridiculous that I couldn't find the bill on the bill-tracking sites. I found it serendipitously when I stumbled on the house energy committee's dedicated website from google.

The problem, I discovered was that the bill lacked a house record (H.R.) number -- a status I believe it will maintain until the house committee marks it up and sends it out to the full house. I'll put aside for a moment the fact that many of the "civics 101" citizen-help websites mislead readers by suggesting that a record number is the first thing a bill gets.

Is there some centralized way of tracking these bills rather than visiting every relevant committee website? Am I missing some feature on Govtrack or Thomas that would enable me to do this? Thanks.

What are the legalities of taking an oath?

odinsdream — Thu, 09 Feb 2006 14:20:13 -0800

Why was Alberto Gonzales not under oath before the Senate Judiciary Committee? Specific legal nuances are what I'm looking for. On Monday, Attorney General Gonzales appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee to be questioned about the NSA wiretapping program. (Video available on c-span*)

Chairman Arlen Specter decided that he would not be sworn in, or given an oath.

What are the legal differences between being under oath or not in this circumstance? Why would Specter have even considered the question before coming to the hearing? Obviously, this was done for a specific reason - what is it?

I don't buy the "let's not insult Gonzales' honor" defense provided by Jeff Sessions.

I might buy the "it's perjury anyway" defense, if the oath didn't even exist.

* The debate over whether he would be sworn in or not begins during the Morning Session clip at 7:20, when it was announced that he wouldn't be sworn in, and continues at 12:00 when that decision is challenged by Patrick Leahy.

19th Century Senate History

Yelling At Nothing — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:12:27 -0800

I am looking for histories of the U.S. Senate in the 19th century. Specifically, I'm looking for books about the period immediately before the Civil War and the Gilded Age, but recommendations for books about the Senate in any part of the 1800s would be welcome (don't forget bopgraphy!)

Entire Congress transcript of Clinton impeachment?

paperpete — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 13:02:55 -0800

Where can I find a complete transcript, preferably in a single PDF file (or at the most 4 or 5) of the House and Senate deliberations, debates and votes over Bill Clinton's impeachment? Of course, it would be a large file. Believe it or not, I've taken a random interest in this and I just want to be able to sit in front of a single PDF and read carefully for days, not clicking a single link or typing a single page number in the process.

I've tried GPO and THOMAS; no luck, although the GPO does output single pages of the Record, which are just frustrating. You have to type a single page number to trigger the PDF output, and you can't specify a range, which sucks.

I've googled around the web and MeFi and AskMeFi. Apologies if I've missed anything!

Speeches in the senate

trey — Mon, 23 May 2005 16:23:44 -0800

What is the origin of addressing all comments in Senate speeches to the President of the Senate? Is this simply tradition or is there some parliamentary reason for this?

Breakdown of filibuster usage over time

rudyfink — Tue, 17 May 2005 16:09:19 -0800

Curiosity struck and I'm looking for a year-by-year breakdown of the number of times the filibuster has been used. A chart with further breakdowns of senator, state, party, duration, cause, and whether the filibuster was ended via cloture would be even nicer. Year - Usages - Senator - State - Party - Cause - Duration - Ended via cloture
1802 - 3
1803 - 2
1804 - 1
.
.
.
2003 - 1
2004 - 2
2005 - 3

Looking for high-quality senate videos

zelphi — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 12:34:17 -0800

I'm looking for high quality video from the senate floor. Is there some government run (public domain) archive containing this? When I called CSPAN looking for an hour of video, they told me it would cost about $150 to get a copy on VHS. An extensive search of google and discussion with my school librarian revealed no other sources for senate video other than CSPAN. Any ideas?

Harry Reid-filter

MrAnonymous — Wed, 03 Nov 2004 19:04:06 -0800

SenateFilter: Who will replace Tom Daschle as minority leader?