Regarding this story about a bill being introduced four times, but apparently never gets to the floor of Congress.
What exactly does languishing in committee mean? They didn’t get to it because there were more pressing items? It’s an item to keep on hand to look like they’re doing something— ‘I introduced so-and-so bill’, etc.?
How often do items end up staying in committee for years?
What’s the bill that has had the most introductions without being reviewed by the floor?
Strictly speaking, the term “languishing in committee” is kind of meaningless. Roughly speaking, there are about 10,000 bills introduced in Congress each year, and about 500 become law. So the odds of any bill getting a vote, or even a hearing (though hearings are usually about issues rather than specific bills) are pretty slim. Keep in mind that all bills expire after each Congress adjourns.
The typical reasons for a committee not taking action on a bill are: the issue is low on the priority list of the chairman; the bill is introduced by a member of the minority party (eg, Democratic bill during a Republican Congress); the Chairman has his own proposals on the subject; the member introducing the bill isn’t a member of the committee of jurisdiction (meaning that the member who drafted the bill probably doesn’t have much expertise in the subject); or the subject matter is expected to be dealt with in a larger, more complex bill which can sometimes take years to assemble.
I don’t know what the record is for most introductions of a bill with no action on it, but I wouldn’t bat an eyelash if I was told that it was 10, 15, or even 20 introductions.
What **Ravenman ** said. Also you can have a situation where the Committee Chair(wo)man deliberately decides that your bill goes to the bottom of the “to do” pile and stays there be because s/he finds it to be so without merit that it’s not even worth bringing forward to rule out, or finds YOU without merit. Things can get so petty, too. Sometimes indeed it’s a case of members filing “do something” bills fully aware nothing will happen.
Since every 2 years with the reseating of a new Congress the filings have to be made all over again, it’s not unusual for some proposals to keep being presented only to die at some point before an actual floor vote happens. Various bills concerning, in my more immediate experience, Puerto Rico’s Political Status have been getting filed in every Congress since 1989 and at most get past one House and then the clock runs out while in committee in the other… because the Congress is in no rush to attend this since it’s not an urgent problem to them.
If every piece of paper a member files had to be reported and voted upon, the committees and the legislative body would be paralyzed by the sheer volume.