How Does a Bill Become a Law in the U.S.?

Who can introduce a bill in Congress?

Article I of the Constitution vests all the legislative powers it grants in Congress, which consists of a Senate and a House of Representatives.^[1] Only members of the House or Senate may introduce legislation, although a member occasionally introduces a bill at the request of the President.^[2]

In the House, a bill is introduced when it is submitted electronically or dropped in the "hopper," a wooden box on the House floor; in the Senate, it is handed to clerks on the floor.^[2] The Constitution requires bills for raising revenue to start in the House, though the Senate may propose amendments to them.^[1] According to CRS, a bill can become law if it is enacted during the same two-year Congress in which it was introduced.^[2]

What happens to a bill in committee?

After introduction, a bill is usually referred to the committee or committees with jurisdiction over its subject.^[2] Committees receive far more bills than they can pursue in detail, and the committee chair largely decides which ones get formal attention.^[2]

The first formal step is often a public hearing, where invited witnesses, such as executive branch agencies, industries and citizen groups, describe a proposal's strengths and weaknesses and answer members' questions.^[3][2] Hearings are not required, and a bill can move forward without one.^[2] The key step is the markup, a meeting where committee members offer and vote on amendments.^[2] The markup ends when the committee agrees, by majority vote, to report the bill to its chamber.^[2] A committee can instead table a bill, which means no further action will be taken on it.^[3] Even bills that are reported are not guaranteed time on the floor, and many are never brought up there during the two-year Congress.^[2]

How do the House and Senate vote on a bill?

In the House, majority party leaders heavily influence which bills reach the floor and in what order.^[2] Most bills are considered under "suspension of the rules," which limits debate to 40 minutes, bars amendments from the floor and requires two-thirds of members voting to agree.^[2] Most other bills come up under a "special rule," a resolution reported by the Rules Committee and adopted by the House that sets the time for debate and limits amendments.^[2]

Senate rules give a simple majority no way to cut off debate on most questions, so senators can wage a filibuster, insisting on extended debate or using other tactics to delay or prevent a final vote.^[2] Senate Rule XXII, the cloture rule, offers a way out: a cloture motion signed by at least 16 senators is voted on two days of session later, and if three-fifths of senators, usually 60, agree, further consideration is limited to 30 hours.^[2] The final vote on the bill then needs only a simple majority, but because cloture is often required, a bill frequently must first win the support of three-fifths of the Senate.^[2] Often the Senate sidesteps the formal cloture process by agreeing, by unanimous consent, to tailored limits on debate and amendments for a particular bill.^[2]

How do the House and Senate agree on one version?

A bill must pass both chambers in the same form before it can go to the President.^[2] In a majority of cases, the second chamber simply agrees to the exact text the first one passed.^[2] When it changes the bill instead, the chambers can trade proposals back and forth, a process called amendments between the houses or "ping-pong," until one accepts the other's version.^[2] They can also appoint a temporary conference committee of House and Senate members to negotiate a compromise, called a conference report, which both chambers must then approve and cannot amend.^[2] The two official descriptions differ in emphasis: the House website says a conference committee will "often" be appointed, while the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says differences are "sometimes" resolved that way.^[4][2]

What can the President do with a bill?

Once both chambers agree to the same text, the bill is enrolled, meaning prepared in its final official form, and presented to the President.^[2] Under Article I, Section 7, the President has ten days, Sundays excepted, to act.^[1]

A vetoed bill goes back to the chamber where it started, and the Constitution requires override votes in both chambers to be recorded by name.^[1] CRS notes that the two-thirds is counted among members voting, and that successful overrides are rare.^[2] A pocket veto cannot be overridden at all.^[5] A table on the House of Representatives' history website, last updated January 9, 2026, counts 2,599 presidential vetoes: 1,533 regular vetoes and 1,066 pocket vetoes.^[5] Congress has overridden 112 of them, which is about 7% of regular vetoes (112 ÷ 1,533, a calculation).^[5]

How many bills actually become law?

Only bills and joint resolutions can become law; simple and concurrent resolutions cannot.^[2] The Congressional Record's summaries of activity (called résumés) count how many of each were introduced in the 118th Congress, which ran from January 2023 to January 2025.^[7][8][6]

Added together, that is 16,554 bills and joint resolutions (a calculation from the table).^[7][8] The Office of the Federal Register numbered that Congress's public laws from 118-1 through 118-274, so 274 became public law, or about 1.7% of the measures that could have (274 ÷ 16,554, a calculation).^[6] The second-session figures come from an "interim" résumé.^[8]