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Civic Participation & Citizenship Collection

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How a Bill Becomes a Law
Joy Ahrens and Valerie DeVuyst, Portland Adult Education

Introduction
We started with a general discussion on taxes - what sorts of things federal taxes pay for. Students came up with a wide variety of programs. We then gave them a sheet - slightly dated, but a good application of this information - detailing how much money the state of Maine received in federal dollars in '97 from which departments. We then read the actual programs mentioned in a newspaper article and had them decide which department each item fell under. For example, $xx for food stamps; $xx for military contract for BIW to build warships; $xx for wastewater treatment plants; $xx for special education programs; $xx for refugee services, and so on. This enabled them to talk about whether this was a good expenditure of money... how many things provided jobs for Maine people and so on. We also talked briefly about the federal budget, and how, like a family budget, you have to decide how many dollars you have available, and then what you need to spend it on. (We did not get into national debt... !!) We felt after this they had a better understanding of the importance of tax revenues to support various programs and things that affect their lives.

Activity
We then handed out a copy of Bush 's tax cut proposal which had been printed in the Christian Science Monitor. There have been many articles and charts in numerous publications showing the proposal from different perspectives, and although they would have provided much more complete information, students would not have been able to understand many of them. This was a simple chart with enough information for discussion purposes. We made sure everyone could understand the chart... how much tax people of different income levels pay now, and how much reduction would come from the proposed tax cut.

We then told students that they would be the Congress, debating and working on this proposed law. (Because of the small number of students, they had to perform multiple sequential tasks as committee, House and then Senate.) We described committees and how they work, and as a House committee, they had a very good discussion on the merits or drawbacks of the proposal. They were each assigned a state representation and we talked about how certain states were currently more or less supportive of the President's views on this issue. Most students felt that they would prefer a greater tax cut for the middle class, rather than so much at the top of the income levels. As Committee, they voted against the proposal, so it was now officially dead.

We described what would have to happen after that if the matter was to be pursued by the proponents. As contrast, we told them that it had actually passed the House, so we had them go through the motions of being a recommending committee, then the House, and then the Senate. We were able to talk about the importance of the Senate votes... how a small state like Maine has a greater impact in the Senate where our two votes count as much as all of Texas. They were all aware of President Bush having been in Portland the previous Friday, and we talked about how he was trying to persuade our Senators (and voters) to support his proposal. We will be able to follow this as it gets discussed in the Senate over the next few weeks. We were also able to impress upon them how important at a time like this it is to call or write your Senators or Representatives, because they are impacted by views of the voters. (Handout with names & contact numbers for all Federal representatives, President, Sec., of State.) We discussed briefly the President signing a bill as a final act to make it a law.. also talked about veto and the 2/3 override. This may have gotten lost on them, but it will be revisited soon as we discuss the executive branch more thoroughly. We left them with a handout from the Sourcebook with a pretty good graphic on how a bill becomes a law (though we both felt that some of the language on the chart was too difficult.)

Reflection
It would have been really nice to be able to build something like this over time.. to have the students search out information, compare what is in the press and discuss ideas from a more self-generated perspective. However, many do not have the language / comprehension skills, nor do we have the time to build that in this class. I also realize that these sorts of activities hopefully are achieving one small goal of getting the students to a better working knowledge of the theory in the books, but we are not getting to the point of having them transfer that into civic action. I think this is a good long-term goal, but hard to achieve in this time frame.

When we do this again, we also will try to make the room feel more official - less like a classroom and more like a committee chamber... better nametags, seat people differently and so on. In this particular class, I also felt that I , as teacher, did too much of the talking, but there did not seem to be another way to present the information.

Follow-up
After letting my 'reflection' sink in, I realized that the natural follow-up would be to write a letter to our Senators. In the next class we had the opportunity to review the information we had discussed, and brainstorm what things the students could write in a letter. In pairs, they each came up with one point/sentence, and we composed a letter to Senators Snowe and Collins. One of the students wrote it out by hand, and we sent it off. I also assured them that these letters do make a difference and that they would receive a reply. The reply was very slow in coming, and only 3 students remained in class the last week when the letter came on May 14. But those who did see it were very impressed (in spite of VERY convoluted language!) with the fact that they actually had a letter from their Senator, and that their words had been received and considered.

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