# data[].attributes.body
If by miracle, your bill has got the heart to get through all of this, you've officially got a law!

# data[].attributes.body
-Luckily, after all this confusing and complex process we call our legislature, the President's role is fairly straight forward.
-When the President receives the bill, he has a few options. If the President likes the bill, it will be signed and it will become a law. Also, if the President does not sign it within 10 days of having it, while Congress is in session, the bill can still become a law.
-However, if the President does not approve of the bill, they have the option to veto it. A veto is when the President fully rejects the bill and sends it straight back to Congress, along with the reasons for the decision for the veto. (there is also the possibility of a pocket veto,when the President during the last 10 days Congress is in session will refuse to act on it.)
- But, wait!! Hope is not completely lost! If the President vetoes a bill, Congress can still make it into a law- all they have to do is get a two-thirds vote in both houses, and it will become law! (but, to be fair, this doesn't happen too often.)
-And, after that, it's history. Every now and then, there are some laws that after a certain amount of time, Congress will review it to see if it has had the desired effects they wanted.

# data[].attributes.headline
3.) Get on the Floor! (Not to dance, but to legislate!)

# data[].attributes.subject
3.) Get on the Floor! (Not to dance, but to legislate!)

# data[].attributes.body
- After the long process of going through committees, the bill is finally sent to the next step: going through floor action.
- On both the floor of the House and on the floor of the Senate, they hold a huge debate on the bill.
- Only a few lawmakers actually take part in the on floor debates. During this time, they talk about what other possible amendments can be added to the bill. They go through a second reading, and after each section is read, there is a chance for discussion about possible amendments. These amendments can be as big as taking out whole sections to adding an additional comma. Each of the amendments must earn a majority vote in order to be passed.
- An interesting strategy that some politicians use when they do not like the bill is they will purposely add on a ton of useless amendments to the bill in order to slow down the process and possibly even kill it in the end.
- Next, after the debate period, the two houses move on to voting. What is interesting about the voting process is a majority of the members (a quorum) must be present for voting to continue. This means that not all the members are required to vote or even be present during the voting process. Also, there will be some situations, like an unanmious consent, when there will be no vote to save time.
- Senate: In the Senate, the bill is officially brought up by the Majority Leader. Then, it must go through a third and final reading. Once that is done, they can get on to voting. There are three different ways the two houses can vote on a bill:
1.) Voice Vote:  When members either call out "Aye" or "No"
2.) Standing Vote/Division Vote: Those in favor stand and are counted, then those opposed stand and are counted.
3.) Roll-Call Vote: As your name is called, you either yell out "Aye" or "No".
-House: In the House, it is a very similar experience. The bill is brought up and the House Parliamentary is in charge of going through the same process as above. Along with those three types of voting, the House also has a fourth, additional type of voting called a recorded vote, when member's votes are recorded electronically and then displayed in the House chamber.
- Now, if by some miracle, the bill survives all this astounding amount of steps, and the Senate and the House both vote it through, they have to go through the referral to the other chamber.
-Referral to the other chamber means that the Senate hands off their version of the bill to the House and the House gives the Senate theirs. Typically, this process can be very interesting, because both houses will find that the other house has a very different version of the same bill as them. So, they will read through their partners bill, add any revisions they see fit. In order for a bill to become a law, both houses have to come to a consensus and have an identical version of the bill.
- Of course, it is very hard to come to a perfect conclusion. So, if one house will not accept the others version, they will have to call a conference committee. The Conference Committees job is to work out the differences between the two opposing viewpoints. The members of this committee (known as conferees) are typically House and Senate members that handled the bill originally. Their main job is to develop a solid compromise that everyone can live with. Then, a majority of the committee will write a final version of the bill, called a conference report.
-Finally! The conference report will be shown to both sides of Congress, and if it is approved, it will be sent to the President.

# data[].attributes.body
In case this endless amount of steps didn't convince you just how long the process of law making is, feel free to sit through this 7 hour video and watch it all unfurl!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
House Session, Jul 15 2010 | Video | C-SPAN.org

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The House approved a five-year extension of the national flood insurance program with higher caps on both premiums and policy coverage.

# data[].attributes.body
- Now, once a bill comes to a committee, there are a few things that can happen. First, the committee could simply ignore the bill and let it die (known as "pigeonholing"). It can also be killed by a majority vote. Another option is the committee chairpersons  may send it to a subcommittee to look over it. Or, the committee may decide that the bill is worth acting on and they will place it on the committee calendar.
-  Once a committee decides to push a bill further on, the committee will hold a hearing on the bill and also consider a "mark-up" session.
- Hearing: Typically, a subcommittee will hold the hearing. At a hearing,  the committee listens to the testimonies of several different people, including experts on the subject, government officials or those who are deeply invested into the bill. The hearing is pretty important because it is a way for many people to gain more knowledge on the topic, it can help chairpersons influence others for or against the bill and it is the greatest chance for citizens to step in and have a say (it's the best opportunity they have throughout the whole legislative process)
- Markup: After the hearings, the committee has a markup session. At this session, the committee combs through each section of the bill and will decide to make any changes they see fit. It can be minor details changed or adding on huge amendments. In the end, they need a majority vote to pass the changes made.
-Finally, after all this scrutiny, the committee decides whether or not to kill the bill completely or to report it. When a committee reports a bill, it means to send the bill to the House or Senate for action. When the bill is pushed on, the committee will also send a written report about the whole bill. This report includes a description of the bill, the committee's actions and opinions, and tells the changes they made to it.

# data[].attributes.body
-This is where things start to get exciting. In the next step, the bill is sent to the Committees.
-Committee: A congressional committee is a legislative sub-organization within the U.S. Congress that handles a specific duty (rather than the general duties of Congress) We need committees because they are responsible for the most important work in Congress- they consider, shape and pass laws that govern our nation.
- In each house of Congress, the bill is sent to a committee that deals specifically with the subject. It can be sent to multiple committees. There are many types of committees, such as a House Committee, a Senate Committee, a Joint Committee(members include both senators and representatives), a Standing Committee (a permanent legislative panel), and a subcommittee ( a smaller division within a larger committee that deals with specified matters and reports that are given to them.) In total, there are over 200 committees and subcommittees.
- Committees are typically well trusted because the committee members are considered experts on their subjects. There is a three step process Congressional members have to go through in order to be appointed to a committee:
1.) A new member of Congress will request which committee they would like to work on.
2.) Ironically, there is a committee that actually looks over the committee assignments and requests. They deliberate over them and draw a line-up of who is in what committee.
3.) Finally, when a committee is made (full of both Democrats and Republicans) the group is submitted for a full chamber approval.

# data[].attributes.body
-The first step in the legislative process is to propose and introduce the bill. What's interesting is that the ideas for the bills can come from anyone from a private citizen to the president, and several different people can write the bill, but only a member of Congress can actually introduce the bill.

- The member who introduces the bill is known as the sponsor. Then, anyone from the House or the Senate can put their name onto the bill to show their support- they become known as cosponsors.

- Between the House and the Senate, bills are introduced in different ways: in the House, you drop the bill into a box near the clerk's desk. In the Senate, the presiding officer has to recognize the senator who is presenting the bill.

- Finally, they make several copies of the bill and hand it out to all the legislators. Each bill is given a number and title. (H.R.=House bill, S.=Senate bill) This whole process is known as the first reading of the bill.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The benefits of raising the minimum wage go beyond the those who receive it, says former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Donald Trump, the real estate mogul and frontrunner-by-far in the Republican presidential primary, asserted callously at the Milwaukee debate that " wages are too high" in this country. Was he fantasizing or was he talking about his own wages? Lucky enough to be born into a millionaire family, how could he know what it feels like to keep one's head above water as the 1.3 million people working at the current federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour do? Even if one can work full-time, after state and federal taxes and Social Security and Medicare deductions, one is lucky to retain $225 a week or $12,000 a year, which is precisely the threshold of poverty for a single person. Welcome to the world of the working poor. No chance of paying rent and taking care of dependent children on that kind of salary. As a matter of fact, you'd be barely surviving. That's not any more than the Russian serfs were able to do.

The billionaire fails to realize that the real minimum wage (that is, the minimum wage adjusted for inflation) has been declining steadily and precipitously. If adjusted for inflation, the minimum wage of 1968 would be $10.90 today. That is a whopping reduction of the federal minimum wage by a third. It's worth noting that the unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in 1968 with a higher real minimum wage. So the unemployment rate is higher today - at 5 percent - than it was in 1968, while the real minimum wage is lower today than it was in 1968.

Moreover, the minimum wage in the U.S. is well below that of other advanced countries. The Economist estimates that the minimum wage should be about $12 an hour in the U.S based on our GDP. That makes a lot of sense, especially because $10.90 would put it just where it was in 1968. If we add a little extra to the minimum wage for the growth in productivity, $12 seems to be a conservative estimate of where the lower bound of workers' wages should be. In addition to the 1.3 million people working at minimum wage, there are another 1.7 million working below minimum wage (tipped employees) and an additional 21 million employees who are working just above the minimum, but below $10 an hour. They would also be affected, because their pay is pegged to the minimum wage. So an increase in the minimum wage would affect a third of the labor force being paid an hourly basis.

Those against raising the minimum wage often argue that it will hurt young people the most and that they "need the experience" of working at the minimum wage. But notice that the youth unemployment rate in Germany is 7.8 percent, and in Switzerland, it is 8.5 percent. In contrast, youth unemployment is 15.5 percent in the U.S., even though the U.S.'s minimum wage ( using Purchasing Power Parities exchange rates) is below that of these Germany's and Switzerland's $10 and $9.20 an hour respectively. In other words, both have higher minimum wages, but much lower youth unemployment rates. Their overall unemployment rate is also lower: 4.5 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively. The minimum wage makes no difference on unemployment.

Sadly, the mogul and TV celebrity continued to reveal his ignorance by adding, "we cannot do this [raise the minimum] if we are going to compete with the rest of the world." That, too, is nonsense, because minimum wage workers are not engaged in the export sector. Do you have a Chinese McDonald's in your neighborhood? I don't think so. In fact, most of the people who work for under $10 an hour are working as cashiers at grocery and department stores (1.4 million), retail salespeople (1.1 million), cooks (1 million) and janitors, cleaners, waiters or waitresses (1.5 million) - none of whom work in the export sector. Raising their minimum wage would not hurt our exports at all. Their wages have nothing to do with competing with the rest of the world.

Trump's advice to low-wage workers was just as ignorant. "People have to go out; they have to work really hard and have to get into that upper stratum." He should tell that to the woman who was working so hard to make ends meet that she died from fumes in her car while napping in between shifts. Hard work used to be a means of social mobility, but not anymore. Not on $7.25 hour.

The brilliant neurosurgeon who is fourth in national polls in a field of 14 candidates weighed in on the discussion, saying, " Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases." Myths dye hard. But the matter of fact is that there is no evidence to back that assertion, as Alan Krueger of Princeton University told the PBS NewsHour.

One of the reasons that increases in the minimum wage would not have an impact on unemployment is that in today's economy an increase in minimum wage would come mostly out of profits. And there is plenty of that to go around.

Think of it this way: You're running a McDonald's selling 1,000 hamburgers a day. You make, say, 75 cents on each Big Mac costing $3.99. Will you raise its price by a nickel to $4.04 in order to make up for an increase in the minimum wage? That would be silly, because $4.04 is not an attractive number, and you'd lose too many sales as a consequence. Rather, you'd be satisfied with a lower profit margin on a Big Mac of 70 cents. But you notice that the Big Mac Meal is selling for $5.69; that gives you the opportunity to raise its price to the next attractive number of $5.75 in order to make up for the increased cost of labor. Will the demand for Big Mac Meals decline? It is doubtful that customers will even notice that tiny increase in price. Hence, Krueger concludes, " The net effect is basically no change in overall employment." Profits might decline slightly, but not on every item. There are offsetting benefits as well: " decently paid workers tend to do a better job."

So profits would not be in great jeopardy. Anyhow, the one thing this economy is good at is generating profits with most of it, of course, going to the top 1 percent. Corporate (after-tax) profits are currently ringing the cash register at $1.8 trillion. This equals about all wages and salaries earned by those employed in the manufacturing sector and in all government employment (state, local, federal) combined. That's quite a lot. Adjusted for inflation, profits increased by a factor of 4.7 since 1968 while minimum wage decreased by a third. That is the best the free market could deliver for the men and women on Main Street.

Another luminary contending for the spotlight, the Florida whippersnapper Marco Rubio, currently the third runner up, had the brilliant hypothesis that, "If you raise the minimum wage, you're going to make people more expensive than a machine." Cashiers are already being replaced by self-checkout machines, but people still need a living wage, Marco! (Not to mention that a few occupations won't be displaced any time soon.) All you need to do is to channel some of the exorbitant CEO salaries toward the common worker.

CEO compensation these days is roughly $7,000 an hour (that is, assuming a 40-hour workweek). In fact, CEO-to-average worker pay has increased by a factor of 15 from the 1960s ratio of 20 to 1 to the present whopping 300 to 1. But in some companies it is astronomical. At Chipotle the ratio is 1,522 to 1. Yes, you read it right. That is not a typo. In some firms, the CEO makes nearly 2,000 times as much as the average worker. At Walmart the ratio is 1,133. Do these CEOs deserve their millions? Not by a long shot. Take the CEO of Coca Cola company. He still pockets $25 million. His rival, the CEO of Pepsico writes a check to himself for $22 million. Yet, I have not heard any of the Republican presidential hopefuls suggest that these millions are hurting our exports. A pittance to the coolies hurts the economy, but the millions to their bosses are quite all right.

Lest I forget to mention, three-quarters of the population support raising the minimum wage to $10 an hour. Even among Republicans there is a majority support for it. Yet, not one of the eight contenders on the podium expressed the slightest empathy for the downtrodden multitude, the American serfs of the 21st century. Not a single one.
Correction: This article previously stated that the CEO-to-worker pay ratio at Chipotle was 1,951 to 1. It's since been update to reflect the correct ratio of 1,522 to 1.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Column: Why raising the minimum wage is good economics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's about time to raise the minimum wage, writes economist John Komlos.

# data[].attributes.body
My Proposal is to raise the minimum wage in the United States to $15.

To begin, when I propose my bill I have to state which type of bill it is, because there are two types- a private bill and a public bill. A private bill deals with individual people or places and a public bill deals with general matters and applies to the whole country.

So, my bill is a public bill.