The purpose of this paper is to try and rationalize why certain members of congress and/or members of the house of representatives decide their position towards certain bills that they choose to vote on or not. Also, to try and state their rationale towards the bill and their assumptions which lead them voting the way they did. In John Kingdon's book, Congressmen's Voting Decisions, he uses a political method to explain how the influence's from constituents, colleagues, interest groups, and executive branch staff, sometimes lead and influence a certain congressional member to vote the way they do. I will show that even though this bill was just recently introduced and not that many co-sponsors have voted on it, it has had support form both sides of spectrum, democrat and republican. I believe they didn't vote on this bill due to personal gain or future benefits, but the evidence that has been presented to them they have been able to read and research for themselves the side-effects and detrimental consequences of using products which contain ephedrine. .
Kingdon argues that members of Congress resort to problemistic search' (96). That is, they search for information only for decisions that are difficult to make "decisions for which there is some conflict within the immediate environment, decisions for which the member has no fixed position on the issue, issues for which the member has no established voting history. For information, again members tend to rely on the media, their constituents, their colleagues "and specifically tend to rely on those with whom they generally agree. Constituents and colleagues play a gatekeeper' role in the sense that other sources of information (i.e., interest groups) must work through them to reach the member.
In order to understand the process by which Senators and/or Representatives propose specific bills, Bill # S.RES.260 will be examined.
