Florida Vacation, Day 2 (TeenPact Congress)

Monday morning we actually were up bright and early.  No sleeping in until 10:00; breakfast was at 7:00 in the dining hall- everyone dressed in Capitol attire and ready to go.  The buses left at 8:00.

Waiting outside the dining hall for the buses...

We were immensely blessed to be able to use the actual House and Senate chambers all week long, including microphones and electronic voting system.  The TeenPact leaders wanted to make this as much like actual congress as possible.  As we had Oklahoma State Representative Josh Cockroft as our "MC," it was pretty authentic!

Everyone had an assigned role for the week: Reporter, Lobbyist, Representative, or Senator. Camryn and I were both Representatives, Adam was a lobbyist, and John was a Senator.

Once at the capitol on Monday, we had morning worship with everyone together in the House chamber, then a devotional given by one of the staffers.  Directly following the devotional, we convened in a joint session for first reads (when bills were "assigned" to committee).

Ana Leigh and Camryn in the House of Representatives

The rest of the day was spent in committee meetings... the first meeting was held right after first reads. There were six committees in total; three each for the House and Senate: the Education and Commerce Committee (mine), the Finance and Banking Committee (John's), and the Ways and Means Committee (Camryn's).  Lobbyists and reporters were not assigned to committees.

The first committee meeting was devoted to reading the bills and allowing sponsors to give a short summary of their bills, with (sometimes) time for Q&A. There were 45 bills written... 15 per committee... and each senator or representative had to select one or more to sponsor or co-sponsor.  We were not allowed to write our own bills, sadly enough, but this way everyone was able to read every bill before coming to Congress and print out copies to reference during the week.

Lunch was eaten at the top of the Capitol building... 22 stories up.

After lunch we had our second committee meetings, during which lobbyists came in and gave presentations for the bills they were lobbying for or against. Many of them had obviously done a LOT of research and preparation, and their speeches were extremely well thought out and convincing. As no one had the time to thoroughly research every bill before coming, it was really helpful to have lobbyists presenting pro and con sides to many of the bills, giving us the information we needed in order to make an educated vote.

After a short break, the third committee meetings convened. At these meetings, we heard again a summary of each bill from the sponsor(s) and then moved on to voting.  All bills that passed out of committee would be brought up in the House/Senate.  There were a few bills that failed in the House committee but passed in the Senate committee or vice versa, but most passes/fails were the same in both committees.

We finished up committee meetings far too soon and got back on the buses to head back to camp. Once there, we played Ultimate Frisbee or four-square or volleyball or Ninja, ate dinner, had evening session and worship, and did rendezvous (a time for small group sharing and prayer time in the dorms). Lights out was at 10:30.


The rest of the family's day