Politics

The first ten bills of the 112th Senate

By Sunlight Foundation & Participatory Politics Foundation

The Senate held their first real legislative day of the session yesterday, which means they finally began formally proposing legislation to deal with over the next two years. In total, senators from both parties introduced 201 bills on the first day. Among them were Senate bills 1-10, which are customarily reserved for the Majority Leader to use for laying out the majority’s legislative goals for the session, ordered by priority from highest (S.1) to lowest (S.10). Take a look:

• S.1 – A bill to strengthen the economic competitiveness of the United States.
• S.2 – A bill to help middle class families succeed.
• S.3 – A bill to promote fiscal responsibility and control spending.
• S.4 – A bill to make America the world’s leader in clean energy.
• S.5 – A bill to reform schools and give America’s children the tools they need to succeed.
• S.6 – A bill to reform America’s broken immigration system.
• S.7 – A bill to reform the Federal tax code.
• S.8 – A bill to strengthen America’s national security.
• S.9 – A bill to reform America’s political system and eliminate gridlock that blocks progress.
• S.10 – A bill to ensure equity for women and address rising pressures on American families.

A quick look back at the first ten Senate bills from last session shows that a little less than half of them got signed into law in some form or another.

All of these are introduced by Majority Leader Harry Reid [D, NV] and they have differet levels of co-sponsorship, which you can see by clicking through to their pages. The full text of these bills should be available shortly, though the texts of the first ten bills are generally symbolic only. They typically express the sense of the Senate that Congress should pass bills dealing with their title heading and give a little more detail about what should be in the bills. Here, for example, is the text of S.1 from the last session.

Full post as published by Open Congress on January 26, 2011 (boomark / email).