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Founding documents & branches
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UNITED STATES
Links verified September 13, 2026.
Congress has two chambers, and a bill has to pass both in identical form before it can become law.
The House of Representatives has 435 voting members, divided among the states by population, plus six non-voting delegates. Every member serves a two-year term, so the whole House is elected every two years.
The Senate has 100 members, two from each state regardless of population. Senators serve six-year terms, staggered so that about a third of seats are elected every two years.
Each chamber also has powers of its own. Bills that raise revenue must start in the House, and the House decides whether to impeach. The Senate holds impeachment trials, confirms presidential nominees, and approves treaties by a two-thirds vote.
It goes to the other chamber, which can pass it unchanged, change it, pass its own version, or not take it up at all.
If the two chambers pass different versions, they have to agree on the same text. One chamber may accept the other’s changes, they may send amendments back and forth, or a conference committee with members of both may write a compromise that both chambers then vote on.
If the second chamber has not acted by the time the bill runs out of time, it does not become law. In Congress that is the end of the two-year Congress; each state sets its own deadline.
For a federal bill, it goes to the President, who can sign it into law or veto it. Congress can override a veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers.
If the President does neither within ten days (not counting Sundays) while Congress is in session, the bill becomes law without a signature. If Congress has adjourned and the bill cannot be returned, it does not become law. That is called a pocket veto.
State bills go to the governor. Governors can veto too, but the deadline, the vote needed to override, and whether a governor can veto parts of a budget bill differ from state to state.
Most bills are sent to a committee after they are introduced. The committee can hold hearings, change the bill, and vote on whether to send it to the full chamber.
Many bills never get that vote. A bill still sitting in committee when it runs out of time is finished. In Congress that is the end of the two-year Congress; states set their own rules. It can be introduced again later, but as a new bill that starts over.
Often because it passed on a voice vote. In a roll call vote, each member’s vote is recorded by name. In a voice vote, members call out together and only the result is recorded, so no record exists of how any individual member voted.
Sometimes it is a gap in the records Citizen holds: for some states and sessions our vote data is incomplete. So a bill with no individual votes shown does not always mean none were recorded.
A bill proposes a law. In Congress there are also three kinds of resolution.
A simple resolution is passed by one chamber, usually about its own rules or to express a view. A concurrent resolution is passed by both chambers, often for joint business such as a budget plan, and does not go to the President. Neither becomes law.
A joint resolution passes both chambers and goes to the President like a bill, and can become law. A joint resolution proposing a constitutional amendment is the exception: it goes to the states to ratify instead.
Forty-nine states have two chambers, like Congress. Nebraska has one, and its members are elected without party labels on the ballot.
The names vary: a lower chamber may be called the House, the Assembly or the House of Delegates. So do term lengths, how long sessions run, and whether the legislature meets every year or every other year.
Choose State above for your own state’s legislature and, where we have one, a guide to how it works.
Each Congress lasts two years, and a bill can keep moving through both of them. Any bill that has not become law by the end of that Congress is finished.
States set their own calendars. Some let bills carry over from one year to the next, others end every bill with its session, and many limit how long a session can run. A bill that has run out of time has to be introduced again to be considered.