Kill
In legislative slang, to kill a bill is to end its progress — to defeat it, block it from reaching a vote, or otherwise stop it from becoming law. A bill can be killed at many points: a committee that never reports it out, a failed cloture vote in the Senate, a floor vote against it, or a presidential veto that Congress does not override. The official record rarely uses the word; it shows a bill that simply dies without further action.
In legislative slang, to kill a bill is to end its progress — to defeat it, block it from reaching a vote, or otherwise stop it from becoming law. A bill can be killed at many points: a committee that never reports it out, a failed cloture vote in the Senate, a floor vote against it, or a presidential veto that Congress does not override. The official record rarely uses the word; it shows a bill that simply dies without further action.
Example: A pocket veto kills a bill outright: if the President does not sign a bill within ten days (Sundays excepted) and Congress has adjourned, the bill dies without the President having to return it — one of the several constitutional ways a bill fails to become law (see the separate pocket-veto entry).
Common misconception: Killing a bill is rarely a mystery — but the absence of a vote is not the absence of a decision. Most bills die silently in committee, which is a decision by inaction; a reader who checks only floor votes will miss where most legislation actually ends.