While Schoolhouse Rock gives an admirable general primer on the legislative process at the federal level, the Texas Legislature's organization and process differ a bit, both in theory and in practice. 

For those interested, throughout the session we will be highlighting specific parts of the process to pull the curtain back and show more of the details on the sausage-making. With the announcement of committee membership last week, it's a great time to give additional information on committees--what they do, how they do it, and why they're important.

With thousands of bills filed every session and only a limited amount of time to get things done, it is obvious that you need an organizational structure that can help ensure those bills get looked at and filtered to a manageable degree. The committees serve that purpose. The House has 28 standing committees that look at policy issues and 6 procedural committees that try to keep things running smoothly. Every member has the opportunity to ask for a specific committee assignment based on his/her seniority, and it is up to the Speaker to plug in every member based on a number of criteria--including member preferences. Of even greater importance is who the Speaker selects to chair each committee, as chairmen have broad authority over which bills to provide a hearing.

Once committee membership is announced and the committees are organized and ready to begin work, the legislative process begins in earnest. The first step in that process is the referral of a bill to committee. The House Rules outline each committee's jurisdiction in broad terms. However, there are numerous occasions where a bill could theoretically fall under multiple committees. Thus, the Speaker's office must make a final determination on where to refer a bill. It can be a huge decision if one committee's chairman is friendly or neutral to a bill while another might be against it--thus ensuring the bill's failure.

Once a bill is referred, it is then up to the member who filed the bill to request a hearing. At that point, the committee chairman has to prioritize bills in order to plan out the best way to work through a large number of bills and allow members to have their voices and ideas considered.

Any action taken on bills by a committee must be done in an open meeting. Some bills are fairly non-controversial and receive little or no testimony from the public. Others can draw a large amount of scrutiny from the public and take hours to be heard. After a bill is heard, it is then up to the chairman to decide if further action needs to be taken and if the bill should receive a vote to send it to one of the calendars committees (which we'll talk about in more detail in the future).

This process is repeated hundreds of times during any session and is designed primarily to either kill bills (most of the time by running out the clock) or improve them and allow them to move forward. Furthermore, this is just the first major step in a multi-step process. After it leaves committee, a bill still has to get set on the House calendar, get voted out by the full House, and then go through a similar process all over again in the Senate. Any differences in amendments or wording between House and Senate bills will be ironed out in a conference committee consisting of members from both chambers. Finally, it can still be killed by a Governor's veto even after having survived the Legislature.