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The Legislative Branch Essay

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The Legislative Branch The legislative branch is the most powerful branch in government. The legislative branch is in charge of making and passing laws. They have the power to override a president’s decision, stop laws from being passed, and basically control all decisions the governments makes. The legislative branch, also called the congress, consists of the House of Representatives and the senate. The reason for two houses of congress is to balance out the concerns of smaller but more populated states against states that are larger but with less population (www.Usgovinfo.com). The House of Representatives consists of 435 elected members that are divided among the fifty states in proportion to their population. There are also six …show more content…

First, the congress can send the bill to the President to be signed and passed into a law. However, if the President vetoes the bill, it is then sent back to congress. Congress can then take a vote on the bill and if two-thirds vote to pass it, the bill is made into a law. Lastly, the President can decide to neither sign the bill nor veto the bill. If this happens when the congress is in session, the bill will become a law after ten days without the President’s signature. (Congressforkids.net) The congress recently sent the Small-Business bill to President Obama. The Small Business bill was passed by congress on September 23 with a 237-187 vote with only nine not voting. The bill was passed basically by democrats alone. There was only one republican that voted for the bill and only thirteen democrats voted against the bill (MSNfirstread). Democrats said that they voted for bill because they understood that small businesses were having trouble getting loans after the financial crisis that began in December of 2007. The Small-Business bill was created to help out small businesses. The bill includes tax-breaks and a thirty billion dollar small-business lending fund. Congress is hoping that this will create more job openings because the businesses must hire a certain amount of people off the unemployment line. This will insure the percentage of people that are unemployed to decrease. The bill would raise new-business expense deductions from

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