One in how many?

Of every 100 bills introduced in Congress, how many become law?

Ask a room how many bills become law and the guesses run from "most of them" to "almost none". This lesson teaches the four gates a bill has to get through, then shows what happens to 100 real bills at each one. The answer lands because students have just been told what the gates are.

Ways to run it

• Straight through. The screen walks the four gates, then the funnel, then the six Congresses. The sheet carries the same tables and the questions. Students finish by taking one real bill to the gate it reached, in class or at home.
• The sheet on its own. No projector needed, and it works for a substitute. The one thing paper cannot do is hold the opening question back, since the sheet is headed with the answer, so the guess is recorded rather than asked.
• Open and close with the screen, improvise the middle. Screen 1 is the guess with the lesson's name withheld, and the last screen is the exit ticket. Everything between is yours.
• Across two days. The gates and the funnel on the first day, their own Representative's bill on the second. The second day doubles as a congress.gov lesson.

Worth knowing before you teach it

Gate 2 is the lesson

Of every 100 bills, 91 never get out of committee, and the chair decides what a committee takes up. So a bill can die without anyone voting against it. If a student leaves with one fact, that is the one, and it is the one that explains who holds power in Congress.

Most students will find a bill that went nowhere

Expect "nothing happened to mine". That is the finding, not a failed assignment: 91 in 100 is what gate 1 looks like from the inside. On congress.gov the Actions tab is the whole record, and a bill showing only "Referred to the Committee on ___" has not moved since the day it was introduced.

The answers

Which gate stops the most? Gate 2, and a right answer says most bills never get a hearing or a committee vote, with nobody voting them down. What would you tell someone who says Congress passes almost nothing? No single right answer. A good one says Congress passes 274 to 443 laws every two years and is asked for far more, so "almost nothing" describes the rate and not the output. Which column changes most across the six? Introduced, 9,082 to 16,565, up 82%. Laws change least. The rate falls because the bottom of the fraction grows, not because the top shrinks.

A sharp student will catch this

In the 116th and 117th Congresses, more bills passed their own chamber than a committee reported. The gates are not a line every bill walks: in the House most bills that pass go under suspension of the rules, which needs no committee report. The floor covers it.

What to expect from the room

The first reaction

"So Congress does nothing." It passes between 274 and 443 laws every two years; what grows is the number of things asked of it. Let a student find that distinction rather than saying it.

The question that makes it land

"If you had one good idea, would you still introduce a bill you knew had a one in 37 chance?" Most say yes, and then have to say why.

Where they push back

Someone will say many laws are large bills carrying dozens of smaller ones. They are right, and it means the count undercounts the ideas that became law. Name it as a limit of the count. The count also leaves out resolutions that can never become law at all.

What not to say

Do not attach the rate to whoever holds the majority. The six Congresses ran from one in 26 to one in 60 under different majorities, and six is too few to tell.

If you have longer, or an older class