Identify and describe one piece of legislation or the topic that is being discussed by the Committee.

Description

This assignment will require that you observe a Congressional committee hearing, and report on your findings. Committees are the workhorses of Congress, and much of the legwork regarding the construction of legislation occurs at this stage of the process. This assignment will acclimate you to the inner workings of this stage of the legislative process. Your job in this assignment is to: 1) Watch at least 1 hour of a legislative committee session (of your choice). 2) Identify and describe one piece of legislation or the topic that is being discussed by the Committee. —  Identify the bill (HR 31, S 2314 e.g.) —  Provide a summary of the bill (This bill would…) — If the committee is not discussing a bill, then provide the topic and a summary of the topic they are discussing. 3) Identify and describe the discussion around the legislation. Is there public commentary? Was there heated debate? Did other members of the committee speak? Questions addressed? 4) Provide your thoughts on the portion of the committee meeting you watched. Is the legislation interesting? Can you think of any reasons why the bill you identified above should (or not) be adopted? Video archives for House committees can be found at https://www.congress.gov/committees/video  (Links to an external site.) . Choose a committee that interests you, and a list of videotaped hearings will appear after clicking on the respective link. If you have a question about the quality of a specific video you would like to write about, then please email me and I can confirm whether or not this is a good option for you. Video archives for Senate committees can be found at each individual committees’ website. To see a list of committees that will direct you to their website (and therefore their hearings archives), visit https://www.senate.gov/committees/index.htm  (Links to an external site.) . You will likely need to click on a “Hearings” tab found somewhere near the top of the page. Again, if you have any trouble finding this, please let me know. All hearings are committee specific, so feel free to choose a committee that focuses on something interesting to you. Make sure that you do not choose a floor session (that is a different stage of the process), or a short clip of a hearing (a handful of minutes of video). You must include the link to your committee hearing under the title of your paper. For your submission, you will need to upload a word/pdf of your assignment to Canvas. Alternate file types (like .pages, and .gdoc are NOT acceptable, and will result in a zero). You will need to follow standard formatting (12 point font Times New Roman, 1-inch margins, double-spaced) with a 2 page text limit. Late submissions will be penalized by 50% per day that it is late.