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You hear a lot about legislators. Call them! Email them! Tweet them! Okay, okay! But who
exactly are these “legislators?" Don’t worry, whether you need a little refresher
or at this point you’ve just been too afraid to ask, we've got you covered.
Legislator basically means lawmaker. It’s someone who can decide what becomes law. In
the United States, legislators are members of Congress, which includes the House of Representatives
and the Senate. Most citizens -- sorry D.C. and the territories -- are represented by
one member of the House and two senators. Each of these people handle every issue under
the sun - from trade to energy to whether there should be a Post Office named after
Elvis. To manage this workload, both the House and the Senate are broken down into committees
that handle particular subject matter - like education, agriculture, aliens. Probably.
Congress does a lot of stuff like regulates commerce, approves Supreme Court justices,
and can even attempt to impeach the President. Shout out to my fellow 90s kids. Most relevant
for us though, they can pass laws. The President can veto those laws, but Congress can override
that veto if they get enough votes. Also, the Supreme Court can declare a law unconstitutional.
But let's rewind to actually making laws. A draft of a law is called a bill and anyone
can write a bill. Yeah even you, but only members of Congress can introduce it into
the House or the Senate. Bills are kinda like vampires, they need an invitation from someone
who lives in Congress to get in. Once a bill is cleared by the Congress bouncers, it gets
examined by those committees we mentioned. They study it and vote on changes they want
to make. If the committee gives it a thumbs up, a like, or a reblog, it’s eligible to
get voted on by the full House of Representatives and/or the Senate, if that's what the leaders
of those chambers want. If not, or if it never “clears” the Committee, well, it probably
won’t ever be seen again. RIP Bill.
To get turned into Officially Official Law, it has to pass both the House and the Senate,
but sometimes they approve different versions of the bill. Kinda like if someone invited
you over to watch Star Wars and you were expecting the original versions, but it turned out they
wanted to watch the remastered versions from 1997. Uh, sorry dude, Han shot first. If that
happens, a special “conference committee” of members from both the House and the Senate
have to iron out the differences and draft a final bill. So I guess, in the case of Star
Wars, that final bill everyone is happy with would be... uh, The Force Awakens? Once a
bill is passed by both the House and the Senate, the President has 10 days to sign or veto
it. This process also more or less happens at the state level. In the United States we
have both federal aka national AND state governments. This means you’re represented by members
of the U.S. Congress as well as members of state legislatures.
That word, representing, is important, because legislators are supposed to represent the
people who elected them. That’s why everyone wants you to contact your legislators, because
if they don’t know how you feel about something they can’t properly represent you.
Each episode we'll be setting small challenges you can take to make a big change in your
community. To start this week: look up who your state and federal representatives and
senators are. Being familiar with local government is key to making change. And let us know in
the comments what issues you care about right now. And be sure to subscribe to follow our
eight part series on creating change and taking action. So join us next time when we take
a peek behind the scenes of government life. Thanks for watching and good luck!