Over the course of the last week we were involved in a simulation of Congress meant to give us the opportunity to learn what it takes to pass a bill. In this simulation, we were assigned a party and a demographic to represent. From there, we were tasked with determining the leadership positions of our party and organizing in to committees. Each one of these committees debated a bill with members of the other party before finally presenting it to the House as a whole. Though this experience I was given a glimpse of what it is like to be a member of Congress. I was assigned to be a Democrat, which forced me to assume a very different ideology. Unlike most of my class, I tend to lean more to the right on most issues, so having to think like a Democrat was a challenge. I was also assigned to represent rural, blue collar workers. I was content with this demographic because I live in near …show more content…
I was not chosen to occupy a leadership role and I joined the Armed Services Committee. As a committee, we were assigned two bills to discuss. The first one was on the reduction of military spending in order to increase funding for K-12 education. As a Democrat I was supposed to be completely for this bill because it involved the reduction of military spending. In order to advance this, I pushed very aggressively for the bill at first. However, I soon learned that, as a member of the minority party, my efforts had little to no effect on the outcome of the bill. The Republicans had all the power, and with the bill being focused on cuts to military funding, were strongly opposed to the bill. In spite of this, we were able to convince the Republicans to cut funding for one military project. As soon as they agreed, we called for a vote immediately before they could change their minds. We passed the bill, lucky to make the one change that we