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A lesson, one period, grade 7 and up

Who holds the gavel

What decides whether a bill gets out of committee?

Almost every bill dies in committee. This lesson asks students to work out what separates the ones that get out from the ones that do not, using 93,870 bills from seven Congresses, and then to find one bill that a committee approved and abandoned anyway.

Ways to run it

  • Straight through. The screen asks the room to guess, sorts bills by one thing only, then turns to the chair, then to the two chambers held by different parties at the same time, then to the same fact counted in people. The sheet carries both tables and the questions.
  • The sheet on its own. No projector needed, and it works for a substitute. The one thing paper cannot do is hold the opening guess back, since the tables are right there, so ask for the guess before the sheets go out.
  • Open and close with the screen, improvise the middle. Step 1 is the guess and the last step is the exit ticket. Everything between is yours.
  • Across two days. The two tables on the first day, tracing one real bill on congress.gov on the second. The second day doubles as a congress.gov lesson.

Worth knowing before you teach it

"Ordered to be Reported" is not "reported"
A committee can vote in markup to report a bill and then never file the report. Counting that vote as leaving committee inflates the figures by about a third, and the gap between the two is what the assignment below has students find. Every rate on this page counts the filed report only.
The cross-party result is an association, not a cause
Bills with a cosponsor from the other party were reported more often in every row. That is not proof the cosponsor did it. They may have been less contested bills to begin with. Nothing here can separate the two, and saying so is the lesson rather than a hole in it.
The split chambers are what keep this non-partisan
In 3 of these seven Congresses the two chambers were held by different parties at the same time. The majority's advantage runs the same way in both, every time. If a room starts hearing a claim about one party, that row is the answer, and it is step 6 on the screen for exactly this reason.
The answers
What matters most for getting out of committee? Two things the record shows: a cosponsor from the other party, and whose party holds the chair. Seniority and subject are the guesses that usually come first and neither is measured here. How much does the majority gain? Its bills were reported between 1.4 and 4.3 times as often as the minority's, across fourteen chamber-Congresses, and it is ahead in all fourteen. Does a cross-party cosponsor ever hurt? Not in 28 of 28 rows. The effect is largest for a sponsor in the minority: in the House, between 0.8% and 1.9% of their bills with no cross-party cosponsor were reported, against between 5.3% and 11.7% of those with one.

What to expect from the room

The answer that comes up first
Someone will say the majority blocks the minority's bills on purpose. That is a fair reading and it is not the whole story. Chairs decide what gets a hearing and there are far more bills than hearings, so a chair who never thought about a bill at all produces the same result as one who buried it. Both are worth talking about, and the numbers do not separate them.
The question that makes it land
"If you were in the minority and wanted your bill to pass, what would you do on Monday morning?" The first table suggests an answer: find a cosponsor from the other party, the one thing in this lesson a single member of Congress controls. Then hold it against the caution above, that the table shows the two go together and not that one causes the other.
Where students will push back
A sharp student will ask whether bills with cross-party cosponsors were simply better bills, or less controversial ones, and whether that is the real reason they moved. Nothing here can rule that out. Say so. That is a genuinely open question and noticing it is a better outcome than the lesson's own conclusion.
What not to say
The gap looks like it might be widening across recent Congresses. Over all seven it goes down and then up again, so there is no trend to report. Reporting rates also drop sharply after the 115th and nobody here knows why. Leaving a real gap visible is worth more than filling it.

The exit ticket

Neither table on this sheet names which party held the majority. Why does leaving the party out make the pattern stronger rather than weaker?

What a right answer has. Because the advantage shows up in every Congress on the table, whichever party was in the majority, so it cannot be about that party. It is about the chair setting the schedule. A student who answers "so you cannot tell who to blame" has the right instinct and the wrong frame: there is nothing to blame, it is how the committee works.

If you have longer, or an older class

Fourteen years in two panels

The extension at the foot of this page plots every bill introduced since 2013 against what happened to them. More bills arrive every Congress and the number reaching the end does not grow with them. It is two panels on two scales rather than one chart, which is itself worth a conversation with an older class: one frame would have put a count in the tens of thousands and a count in the hundreds on the same axis.

A gap nobody here can explain

Reporting rates fall sharply after the 115th Congress and stay down. We do not know why, and the teacher notes say so rather than offering a reason. A class that wants a research question has one: what changed in committee practice after 2018, and what would count as evidence either way.

Independent assignment

Find a bill that stopped after its committee approved it.

There is a stage between "sitting in committee" and "reported to the floor" that almost nobody knows about. A committee can meet, debate a bill, vote to report it, and then never file the report. Some of those bills pass anyway, by a road that needs no report. The rest are approved and stranded at the same time: 1,319 bills were in exactly that state across these seven Congresses as of September 15, 2026.

  1. Pick one from the list below, or find another.
  2. Open its page on congress.gov and scroll to All Actions.
  3. Find the line that reads "Ordered to be Reported". Write down the date.
  4. Read every action after it. Usually there are none.
  5. Write one paragraph saying where the bill stopped, who had approved it by then, and one thing you would need to know to explain why it went no further.
H.R. 3514 Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act of 2025 119th Congress, 302 cosponsors, 169 from the other partyH.R. 9250 Great American Outdoors Act 250 119th Congress, 251 cosponsors, 126 from the other partyH.R. 3164 Ensuring Community Access to Pharmacist Services Act 119th Congress, 141 cosponsors, 61 from the other partyH.R. 1266 Combating Illicit Xylazine Act 119th Congress, 113 cosponsors, 63 from the other partyH.J.Res. 163 Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "New Source Performance Standards for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From New, Modified, and Reconstructed Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; Emission Guidelines for Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Existing Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule". 118th Congress, 164 cosponsors, 0 from the other partyH.J.Res. 144 Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, Department of Justice, relating to "Definition of 'Engaged in the Business' as a Dealer in Firearms". 118th Congress, 130 cosponsors, 0 from the other partyH.R. 5012 SHINE for Autumn Act of 2023 118th Congress, 114 cosponsors, 71 from the other partyH.J.Res. 164 Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Commerce relating to "Revision of Firearms License Requirements". 118th Congress, 110 cosponsors, 0 from the other partyH.R. 2748 Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021 117th Congress, 333 cosponsors, 169 from the other partyH.R. 1297 Air America Act of 2021 117th Congress, 235 cosponsors, 153 from the other partyH.R. 40 Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act 117th Congress, 196 cosponsors, 0 from the other partyH.R. 1145 To direct the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan in the World Health Organization, and for other purposes. 117th Congress, 128 cosponsors, 53 from the other party

Every one of these was approved by the committee handling it, never reported, and had not passed either chamber as of September 15, 2026. The links go to the public record, not to anything of ours.

Answer key. For every bill in the list, the last committee action is "Ordered to be Reported" and no report was filed, so the paragraph should end at that date. A student who finds a later action has found a bill that moved after this page was built, which is worth saying out loud: the record changes, and that is the lesson.

Extension: fourteen years, seven Congresses

More bills every Congress. Not more laws.

Each column is one Congress, so each covers two years. The top panel counts every bill introduced. The bottom panel counts what happened to them, on its own much smaller scale. Read the two together and the story is not that Congress passes fewer laws. It is that far more bills arrive and the number reaching the end does not grow with them.

Point at a column, or tab to it, for that Congress's figures.
2,753Cannot become lawCan become lawMeasures introduced17,0169,082What became of them1,232Reported out of committee980Passed its chamber138Signed into law2014Senate D→R2016no change2018House R→D2020Senate R→D2022House D→R2024Senate D→RRRRDDRRHouseDRRRDDRSenate2013–142015–162017–182019–202021–222023–242025–26113th Congress114th Congress115th Congress116th Congress117th Congress118th Congress119th Congress
Can become law Cannot, ever: concurrent and simple resolutions Reported out of committeePassed its chamberSigned into law

The two letters under each column are the party that held that chamber. Where they differ, the two chambers were held by opposite parties at the same time. The colours are two shades of one tone on purpose, so neither party reads as the better one, which is also why the letter is printed rather than left to the shade. The last column is still being written and is drawn faded: those bills have not finished happening.

Every line between two columns is an election. A Congress runs from January of an odd year to January of the next odd year, and the November election in between seats the next one. In these seven Congresses a band changes colour only because people voted. Control can change in the middle of a Congress, though: the Senate's did in 2001, when one Senator left his party, and the note below covers the first seventeen days of the 117th. Five of the six elections here changed a chamber. Three of those five were midterms and two were presidential years, and across these seven Congresses the House changed hands only at midterms while the Senate changed at both. Six elections is not enough to call that a rule, and the class should be told so.

One thing this chart smooths over. The 117th Senate is recorded as Democratic for its full two years. For its first seventeen days it was not: the Congress convened on January 3, 2021, the Georgia runoffs were on January 5, and the two senators who gave Democrats the tie were not sworn in until January 20. Almost nothing happens in a chamber's first seventeen days, so no figure on this page moves, but the band is drawn as if the whole term were settled and it was not.

Not everything Congress introduces can become a law

Two of these four kinds go to the President. Two never do, no matter how many people vote for them. Every rate on this page counts only the ones that can, which is why the rates are higher than the ones usually quoted.

Can become law
  • H.R.a bill that starts in the House60,028
  • S.a bill that starts in the Senate32,139
  • H.J.Res.a joint resolution from the House1,051
  • S.J.Res.a joint resolution from the Senate652

93,870 since 2013

Cannot, ever
  • H.Con.Res.needs both chambers, never the President969
  • S.Con.Res.needs both chambers, never the President351
  • H.Res.the House speaking only for itself8,998
  • S.Res.the Senate speaking only for itself5,568

15,886 since 2013

Concurrent resolutions need both chambers but never the President. Simple resolutions stay in the chamber that wrote them. Both matter, and neither is a law.

One more thing in the numbers. Every Congress front-loads. Between 1.60 and 2.02 times as many bills are introduced in a Congress's first year as in its second, in all 6 Congresses that are finished. The current one is left out because its second year is only as long as today. Ask the class why a member of Congress would hurry.