FRQ Prompt 8

The legislative branch of the government was designed to make the lawmaking process slow and force compromise. The House and Senate are a very large part of the delayed procedure and both have differing methods of passing a bill. The party who holds the majority in both houses not only has the advantage of numbers, but also possess the upper hand in other ways. For example, in the House of Representatives, the majority party has the majority when it comes to putting bills to a vote and is able to exert a substantial amount of influence on the process. Through a series of procedural guidelines in the House, the majority party can prevent bills from even coming up because they control the agenda and debates.
The House and the Senate operate very differently when it comes to the lawmaking process. One of the major is the level of formality in the system. The House has much more of a set process, with many formalities in place that the Senate does not have. Part of the set process is the Rules Committee, a committee that views all bills before they reach the House floor to budget time. Also, in the Senate, members can filibuster and effectively stonewall a bill. The House has no such ability.
These difference can hinder the passage of a law because one chamber can pass a bill while the other does not. The filibuster is a very obvious roadblock that the Senate can use. If a bill was passed in the House, Senators agains it in the other chamber can stall a vote on the issue until it is effectively killed. On the other hand, the House can block a bill with the Rules Committee, an institution that the Senate does not posses. The House does not have unlimited debate so Rules Committee sees each proposed bill and allots the amount of time to be spent on it. If the Rules Committee (controlled by the majority party) does not want a bill to pass, they can cut time and prevent any issues with the bill from being resolved.