You have one idea.
Thirty weeks.
Make it law.

Legislative counsel turns the idea into sections, definitions, and effective dates. Every provision you add buys impact and costs votes. Drafters argue about enforcement, funding, and whether a sunset clause will calm nervous moderates.

Overstuffed drafts give opponents a dozen attack surfaces before the first hearing.

Only a member can introduce a bill, so you need a sponsor, ideally one with seniority, committee position, and a reason to care. The sponsor's name becomes the bill's brand, and their political capital becomes its fuel.

A weak or wrong-committee sponsor can doom a bill the day it's filed.

The bill is referred to a committee, gets a hearing (if the chair allows one), and faces markup: the amendment fight that decides what survives. Chairs control the calendar; the calendar controls everything.

Most bills die right here: never scheduled, amended into mush, or voted down in markup.

On the floor, the whole chamber weighs in. Floor amendments, some helpful, some poison pills, can rewrite the bill in an afternoon. The whip count tells you whether to push for a vote or stall for time.

Bringing a bill to the floor without the votes is how careers end.

Pass the House and the Senate is waiting, with its own committees, its own chairs, and its own ideas about your bill. Bicameralism means every fight happens twice, and the second chamber knows you're running out of session.

Session clocks kill more second-chamber bills than votes do.

If the chambers pass different versions, a small conference committee negotiates the final text behind closed doors. Conferees are picked by leadership: the same people who control the floor calendar.

Conference reports get take-it-or-leave-it votes. Sometimes the answer is leave it.

In the game's fictional state, the governor can sign or veto the bill. A veto sends it back for an override attempt that requires a supermajority in both chambers.

An override needs more support than ordinary passage in both chambers.