The bills were introduced months ago—why is this taking so long?

To quote Rick, “It’s moving at the speed of government.” He doesn’t mean this in a negative way, but rather in a realistic way. Before the bill was
introduced several months ago and things were still pretty hush-hush, the lobbyist told us that our bill would be introduced in the Senate “any day now.”
So I had the Senate live feed open on my computer so we’d know when the bill officially dropped. It took weeks before it was finally introduced.

Have you ever watched the Senate live feed?
Between quorum calls, days out of session, and time-sensitive issues that had been on the back-burner for months and suddenly needed to be addressed by the end of the day—it took much longer than I expected for the bill to finally be introduced. The combination of a large number of people working together to make decisions with the government having a lot to do means that things move slowly. Take heart. The fact that our bill has not yet been voted on does not mean that we’re doomed. It’s just the way things are.

Does the number of cosponsors really matter?

The number of cosponsors a bill has can be interpreted as a rough indication of how much support exists for a bill. During a personal interview, an assembly member from California said, “Sponsorship is very important but it does not
mean much if you do not build coalitions to garner support for your bill. You can sponsor bills all you want, but if you don’t gain the necessary
support for them, they won’t go anywhere.”

Consider that there are 435 members of the House and 97 of those members are cosponsoring H.R.2903 as I write this. That means over 22% of the House has already publicly demonstrated their support for this bill. Also, in this year’s 114^th Congress, the average number of cosponsors for a bill in
the House is 15.4 cosponsors. And we have 97. On the Senate side, the average number of
cosponsors for a bill in this year’s Congress is 4.9 cosponsors, and we have 19. Therefore,
our bill currently has the public support of a minimum of 20% of Senators, including the sponsor. Although nothing is guaranteed, this bodes well for us.

If our bill gets through the House and the Senate, will the president just veto it?

He could, but he probably won’t. It’s already got support from both Democrats and Republicans, and it’s unlikely he would want to waste a veto on such a
small bill. He’s also only used 4 vetoes since he’s been in office, which he seems to save only for issues that are directly against his policy agenda.

If Federal law trumps state law, then why will home distilling still be illegal in some states even if this bill passes?

This is complicated. Technically, if a state law gives people more rights than a federal law, the state law is supposed to win—but we already know that
wasn’t the case with home distilling. That’s because article VI of the Constitution has something called the supremacy clause, which says that the

federal government trumps state law if there’s conflicting legislation between them

. So in a nutshell, if the federal government firmly says no, the answer is no regardless of what the states say. Otherwise, if the federal government
says, “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you,” then the states get to decide for themselves. In our case, the passing of this bill would remove the
federal government saying “NO” to home distillation, but it would not affect the individual state’s laws, which would then locally regulate home
distilling.

What happens during the timeframe after the bill passes, but before it goes into effect?

If passed as is, the actual law does not take effect for 1 year. However, the TTB already contacted distillation suppliers back in February to let them
know that they no longer have to submit their lists of still purchasers ever few months. Therefore, once passed, we believe that the chances of the TTB doing any more raids would be quite slim. Logically, it just wouldn’t make sense for the TTB to invest their time and money in trying to bust people for
something that is going to be federally legal in a matter of months. As long as your vessel is within the limits set by the bill (15.5 gallons) and you are
not illegally selling product, you’ll most likely be better off after the bill passes than you were a couple years ago when the Florida raids
occurred—even during that window of time before it becomes law. Of course, we’re not endorsing or suggesting that anyone engage in any illegal activity
before home distilling becomes legal federally, but these are just some thoughts on the matter.