Just some facts

[LSK]

The House was in GOP control from 1994 to 2006.

The Senate was in GOP control from 2002 to 2006.

Each bill goes through several stages in each house. The first stage involves consideration by a committee. After considering and debating a measure, the committee votes on whether it wishes to report the measure to the full house. A decision not to report a bill amounts to a rejection of the proposal. Both houses provide for procedures under which the committee can be bypassed or overruled, but they are rarely used. If reported by the committee, the bill reaches the floor of the full house. The house may debate and amend the bill; the precise procedures used by the House of Representatives and the Senate differ. A final vote on the bill follows.

There is a device in the Senate called Cloture which requires a bill to have 60 YES votes before it can go to a final vote. The Democrats currently do not have even close to 60 votes for cloture.

In order for the bill to become law, both houses must agree to identical versions of the bill. If the second house amends the bill, then the differences between the two versions must be reconciled in a conference committee, an ad hoc committee that includes both senators and representatives. In many cases, conference committees have introduced substantial changes to bills and added unrequested spending, significantly departing from both the House and Senate versions. The revised bill is then voted again in both Chambers.

Once a bill is passed it goes to the President who can sign it or veto it (or with Bush, sign and ignore it or rewrite it with a signing statement).

If the bill is vetoed, it must be passed by a 2/3 majority of Congress to override.

Some of this was taken from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress#Bills_and_resolutions