Legislative Power

Article One, section seven sets out the process by which a bill becomes a law, and this is basic high school civics. It essentially says that for a bill to become law, it has to pass both the House of Representatives and the Senate in the same text, in the same form. And then it has to be presented to the President for his signature, and the President can, within 10 days, veto a bill for any reason, policy reasons, as well as constitutional reasons. If the President vetoes the bill, it can only become a law if it's passed by two-thirds of both houses of Congress over the president's veto. It should be noted that Article One, section seven, lawmaking really requires a national super majority before federal laws can be enacted. In practice, to get a bill through the House of Representatives, through the Senate, especially with its filibuster and 60 votes needed for cloture, and then signed by the President requires more than 51 percent support nationwide. It really requires something more like 55 or 60 percent support nationwide. The framers deliberately made it hard for Congress to make law because they were giving Congress all sorts of new powers that it didn't have under the Articles of Confederation, and they wanted to protect the states and protect federalism by making it hard for Congress to make law.