How does bill signing actually work?
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  How does bill signing actually work?
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President Johnson
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« on: December 04, 2018, 03:11:25 PM »

A question I've always asked myself with regard to presidents and governors: How does bill signing actually work? I mean, all laws that congress or a legislature pass must be signed into law*. Everyone who ever read a few laws knows that the texts are often long and not too easy to understand. With that many pieces of paper reaching a chief executive's desk, he or she can't spend several hours every day reading this stuff and figuring out whether this can be approved or not. Especially when a congressional session ends, it is not uncommon that several hundreds of pages of laws get signed in one day. And most laws are unimpressive; only handful really get public attention.

Is there a staff who carefully reviews every single bill that comes across? And do they put all laws on different stacks of paper for the president/governor which ones can be signed and which not? And how do they always know whether the chief executive wants to approve this? Do they prepare summaries for the president/governor?


(* I know they automatically become law after some days if no veto is submitted, but most laws indeed get signed)
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Del Tachi
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« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2018, 02:38:34 PM »

An executive's staff will let him know which bills he needs to sign.  Since the President and most governors don't have a line-item veto, there's really no reason for an executive to pour over the legislative language before deciding whether or not he wants to sign a bill. 

Legislative language is often written by lobbyists, lawyers and think tanks and circulates among the relevant legislative/executive staff for weeks before being written (or amended) into a bill.  If the two sides have a good working relationship, legislative and executive staff will cooperate to make sure that there's no language in a bill that would cause it to be vetoed. 

Most bills can be auto-penned by an executive's staff.  It's generally only the larger, marquee pieces of legislative that get the big signing ceremonies. 
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