Congress bills and how the process of legislating bills work in the US Congress

Abstract

This paper will discuss Congress bills and how the process of legislating bills work in the US Congress. To do so, it will look at a very recent bill presented in the Congress, discuss the issues surrounding the bill, its presentation and submission in the American congress and any future of consequences that will be generated by the bill. A bill is a proposed piece of law. In the US, a bill is does not become a piece of legislation until it is approved by the congress. These bills can sometimes start with an idea of a member of the public who presents the idea to a US Congress senator. In other cases, the idea may come from the senators themselves, who start working in the creating of the proposed bill. This report will look at the Bill H.R.4280, titled “To amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to provide that Puerto Rico may be treated in the same manner as the several States for the purpose of carrying out the supplemental nutrition assistance program under such Act”. This bill was submitted in the US Congress on the 27th of March of 2012, by the Rep. Pedro Pierluisi, who is the co-sponsor of the bill along with 11 other co-sponsors (http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin). These co-sponsors include the Porto Rican New York Congressman José Serrano (http://www.elnuevodia.com/pierluisipidepleno).

Pierluisi is the current Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico to the US Congress, running on its second term. He has sponsored 19 bills, and co-sponsored 139. 2 of these bills made it into law http://www.opencongress.org). This bill is very significant for the population of Puerto Rico, as it would generate the admission of Puerto Rico into the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Restoration Act, integrated by Guam, the Virgin Islands and the rest of the 50 US States. This would provide additional funding of over 457 million dollars for Puerto Rico's Food Assistance Program, which helps low income Puerto Ricans (http://caribbeanbusinesspr.com). The Food Stamp as implemented in Puerto Rico in 1974. However, this US state was removed from the program in 1981. Since then; Puerto Rico started to use an annual block grant (Kantrow, 2012).