Legislative Branch, Day 3 - Class Recap

The office of Speaker of the House, which is currently controlled by Republicans, and Representative Paul Ryan from Wisconsin. Photo taken in 2010.

Hi everyone,

It was basically another work/prep day for our legislative branch unit today in class! Here's the recap for today:

Learning Targets Addressed:
Knowledge LT 2: I can demonstrate an understanding of the role of governments in current issues.
Knowledge LT 5: I can demonstrate an understanding of the principles, structures, and functions of different levels of U.S. government.

Soundtrack: "Represent" by Weezer. Selected for today because we were continuing to look at Oregon's Representatives in Congress. Get it? Lyrics here.

AGENDA 10/19/17:
News Brief – Nic
Finish Oregon Reps
115th Congress
Create Bills

Homework: Read the blog. Create a bill if you did not in class. Finish the Oregon representatives handout and the 115th Congress profile. Next news brief: Emma.

News Brief: Nic had the news brief today and talked about this story: CNN.com - What we know and don't know about the deadly Niger attack. We discussed what happened as a part of the reaction to these deaths and President Trump's phone calls with relatives.

Emma volunteered for the next news brief. We also checked in briefly about the weekend, before moving on.

Finish Oregon Reps: At the start of the class, we were working on the Oregon representatives handout, as well as the 115th Congress paper and creating bills. Here is the handout that I passed out last class:

Google Drive - Oregon Representatives in Congress Handout

The main point here is to know who our representatives are and what they believe. It is important that we know who represents us in Congress, and what their ideas are!

115th Congress: The next new piece from today was this handout, looking at the demographics of the current representatives in congress:

Google Drive - 115th Congress Profile Assignment

Here is a link to the website/pdf document that has the answers:

FAS.org - Membership of the 115th Congress: A Profile

I hope this helps! We went through the answers to these questions in class.

Create a Bill: This was in preparation for next class, when we will be doing a simulation of Congress. To start this off, I showed this recently released look behind the scenes as the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was passed in 2010:

Here were the questions I wanted you to answer in your personal bill proposals:

1. What are you proposing?
2. Who will it impact?
3. When will it begin or end?
4. Where (which states) will be impacted?
5. Why should this bill pass?
6. How much will it cost?

Bring these in next class, please! Thanks for your work on this! See you next class, when we will simulating the legislative process!