Chapter 13: The Congress
Chapter 13: The Congress
2. The average member of Congress is a white male in his mid-50s.
3. Most members are married, have children, and are members of a Christian church.
4. Most members are lawyers, though many have
backgrounds in business, education, agriculture, journalism, or professional
politics.
2. Trustees — Many members see themselves as holders of the public trust who must decide issues based on merit alone, and not based on the opinions of constituents or any other groups. Constituents are people in a member of Congress's State or district.
3. Delegates — Many members see themselves as agents of those who elected them and believe they should suppress their own views in favor of those of the electorate.
4. Partisans — Many members see themselves as bound to vote on issues according to the party platform and the wishes of party leaders.
5. Politicos — The role of a member of Congress as a balancer of conflicting factors.
6. Other Roles — All members of Congress also
must act as servants of their constituents, providing the people back home
with a wide range of services, from making appointments to military academies
to helping companies in their districts obtain government contracts.
2. Non salary Compensation — Members of Congress receive a wide range of fringe benefits, from free parking, low-cost medical care, generous pension plans, to free printing and distribution of speeches, newsletters, and other materials.
3. The Politics of Pay
b. Reasons for high salaries include making public service appealing to qualified people; allowing people to move away from their home states; and as a guarantee that the most able people will run for Congress.
c. The President's veto and voter backlash act
to limit salaries.
2. Members are immune from court action because
of any speech they may make on the floor of Congress. Freedom of speech
is vital to legislative debate.
2. The total number of seats are apportioned, i.e., allocated among the States, on the basis of their respective populations.
3. Representatives hold office for two-years.
4. No limit exists on the number of terms representatives
may serve.
2. In 1929 the number of seats in the House was
fixed at 435, to be redistributed every 10 years according to the census.
2. The Supreme Court in the 1964 case, Wesberry
v. Sanders, held that sections of States may not be over- or underrepresented
in Congress, upholding the principle that one person's vote should be worth
as much as another's, i.e., "one person, one vote".
2. The House judges the acceptability of individual members and may vote to censure or remove members.
3. The Supreme Court, in Powell v. McCormack (1969), ruled that the House may not exclude any member-elect who meets the Constitution's requirements.
2. Prior to the adoption of the 17th Amendment in 1913, United States senators were chosen by state legislatures. Since 1914, members of the Senate have been chosen by the people at regular November elections.
3. Senators serve six-year terms that are staggered so that only a third of the members are up for election every two years. The Senate then, can be called a continuous body, i.e., all of its seats are never up for election at the same time. It is generally called the "upper" house because it has stricter qualifications than the House, more prestige, a longer term of office, and has historically been a stepping-stone to higher political office.
4. Because senators serve longer terms that House members and because they represent the views of their entire State, senators are expected to focus less on the interests of small localities and more on the "big picture" of government and of their entire State.
5. Senators have become famous earlier in their
career than representatives because of its small size, longer terms, and
larger staffs. In addition, their power and influence stems from their
exercise of "senatorial courtesy." Senatorial
courtesy gives senators who belong to the president's party significant
approval power over presidential nominees.
2. As in the case of the House, the Senate judges the qualifications of its members and may exclude a member-elect by a majority vote. The Senate may punish members with a majority vote or expel them with a two-thirds vote.
2. Off-Year Elections — Congressional elections occurring in nonpresidential election years are called off-year elections, in which the party holding the presidency often loses seats.
3. Districts
b. All seats in the House are filled by voters in each district are able to elect one of the State's representatives from among a field of candidates running in that district.
c. Under the general ticket system, all of the
State's seats are filled from the State at large — that is, from the State
as a whole.
2. House of Representatives
b. Even when challengers' positions on the significant issues are closer to the voters' positions, incumbents still tend to win.
c. Thus, the most important resource to ensure
an opponent's defeat is simply to be the incumbent.
b. One reason for the greater competition in the Senate is that an entire state is almost always more diverse than a congressional district and thus provides more of a base for opposition to an incumbent.
c. Senators have less personal contact with their constituents and receive more coverage in the media than representatives do (and are therefore more likely to be held accountable on controversial issues).
d. Senators tend to draw more visible challengers
who are already known to voters and who have substantial financial backing.
2. Stories of presidential "coattails" (the theory that other candidates could ride into office by clinging to presidential coattails) do not seem to hold up in practice.
3. Members of Congress do not gain or lose very much from the fluctuations of the economy.
4. Members of Congress engage in three primary
activities that increase the probability of their reelections: advertising,
credit claiming, and position taking.
b. Credit claiming involves personal and district
service. There are two ways members of Congress can service the constituency:
casework and the pork barrel.
(2) The pork barrel refers to expenditures on
federal projects, grants, and contracts for cities, businesses, colleges,
and institutions. Because credit claiming is so important to reelection,
members of Congress rarely pass up the opportunity to increase federal
spending in their state or district.
d. Perhaps the most effective means of engaging
in advertising, credit claiming, and position taking at the same time is
the congressional newsletter. Most of the franking privilege is devoted
to mailing newsletters. Franking
privilege: A privilege under which members of Congress are entitled to
send mail to constituents without charge by putting their frank, or mark,
on the envelope.
b. Seeing the advantages of incumbency, potentially
effective opponents often do not want to risk challenging members of the
House.
2. Most members of Congress represent constituencies
in which their party is in the majority.
2. Congressional membership is reapportioned after each federal census, and incumbents may be redistricted out of their familiar base of support. The majority party in the state legislature is more likely to move two of the opposition party's representatives into the same district than two of its own.
3. In 1994 a major political tidal wave spawned
by angry voters defeated thirty-four Democratic incumbents in the House
and two Democratic incumbents in the Senate.
2. Spending is greatest when there is no incumbent and each party feels it has a chance to win.
3. Critics of Political Action Committees (PACs)
offer substantive criticism of the present system of campaign finance.
b. In 1996, incumbents in both houses received $131 million from PACs, challengers received $26 million, and the rest went to candidates for open seats.
c. Each PAC is limited to an expenditure of $5000 per candidate (most give less), but some organized interests circumvent the limitations on contributions by creating or contributing to several PACs.
d. PACs seek access to policymakers. Thus, they
give most of their money to incumbents, who are already heavily favored
to win. Critics of PACs are convinced that PACs are not trying to elect
but to buy influence.
5. Money is important for challengers. Money buys them name recognition and a chance to be heard.
6. When an incumbent is not running for reelection
and the seat is open, there is greater likelihood of competition.
b. In open seats, the candidate who spends the
most usually wins.
2. Some reformers have proposed term limitations for senators and representatives. However, in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. et al v. Thornton, et al., the Supreme Court ruled that state-imposed term limits were unconstitutional in violation of the supremacy clause.
2. Power is no longer in the hands of a few key members of Congress who are insulated from the public. Instead, power is widely dispersed, requiring leaders to appeal broadly for support.
3. House leadership
(2) Formal powers of the Speaker today include:
B) plays a major role in making committee assignments;
C) appoints or plays a key role in appointing
the party's legislative leaders and the party leadership staff,
D) exercises substantial control over which bills
get assigned to which committees.
c. Party whips work with the majority leader to round up votes and to report the views and complaints of the party rank-and-file back to the leadership. Whips are legislative leaders of each party who are responsible for rounding up party members for votes on critical issues in either the House or the Senate.
d. The minority party is also organized (with
a minority leader and whips), and is prepared to take over the key posts
if it should win a majority in the House.
b. The Senate majority leader — aided by the majority
whips — is the position of real power and authority in the Senate. He rounds
up votes, schedules the floor action, and influences committee assignments.
b. Congressional leaders are not in the strong positions they occupied in the past. Leaders are elected by their fellow party members and must remain responsive to them.
c. Party leadership — at least in the House — has been more effective in recent years. Following the Republican takeover in 1995, former Speaker Newt Gingrich centralized power and exercised vigorous legislative leadership.
b. Presidents have many resources with which to
influence Congress. They may try to influence members directly, but more
often will leave White House lobbying to the congressional liaison office
and work primarily through regular meetings with the party's leaders in
the House and Senate.
2. Joint Resolutions — These deal with temporary or unusual matters, have the possibility of gaining the force of law, must be passed by both houses, and must be signed by the President.
3. Concurrent Resolutions — These deal with common concerns of both houses, have the force of law, and do not require the President's signature.
4. Resolutions — Voted on by either house, but have no force of law; they usually are concerned with house rules and do not require the President's signature.
5. A rider is a provision not likely to pass on
its own merit that is attached to an important measure.
2. After its first reading, the Speaker refers
the bill to the appropriate standing committee for consideration.
b. They regularly hold hearings to investigate problems and possible wrongdoing, and to investigate the executive branch.
c. They control the congressional agenda and guide
legislation from its introduction to its send-off for the president's signature.
b. Joint committees are study committees that exist in a few policy areas, with membership drawn from both the Senate and the House.
c. Conference committees which are composed of members of both legislative chambers whose sole function is to reconcile different versions of the same bill.
d. Select
committees are temporary committees appointed for a specific ("select")
purpose, such as the Senate select committee that looked into Watergate.
b. New bills sent to a committee typically go directly to subcommittee, which can hold hearings on the bill. The most important output of committees and subcommittees is the "marked-up" (revised and rewritten) bill, submitted to the full House or Senate for consideration.
c. Members of the committee will usually serve as "floor managers" of the bill when the bill leaves committee, helping party leaders secure votes for the legislation. They will also be cue-givers to whom other members turn for advice. When the two chambers pass different versions of the same bill, some committee members will be appointed to the conference committee.Conference committee: A committee composed of members of the House and Senate that tries to reconcile disagreements between the two branches of Congress over differing versions of a bill.
d. Legislative
oversight — the process of holding executive branch agencies accountable
for its actions. It is one of the checks Congress can exercise on the executive
branch.
(2) Congressional oversight occasionally captures public attention, such as congressional investigations into the Watergate scandal, the 1987 Iran-Contra affair, Whitewater, and numerous other scandals during the Clinton Administration.
(3) Congress keeps tabs on more routine activities
of the executive branch through its committee staff members, who have specialized
expertise in the fields and agencies that their committees oversee (and
who maintain an extensive network of formal and informal contacts with
the bureaucracy).
b. Members seek committee assignments that will help them achieve opportunity to make policy in areas they think are important. For the first-term representative, concentrating on assigned committee work is essential to maximize his or her power in the House. Merely doing constituent work to assure reelection or performing other functions with that same goal will not enure power in the House but may guarantee reelection.
c. Although every committee includes members from
both parties, a majority of each committee's members — as well as its chair
— come from the majority party.
b. Until the 1970s, committee chairs were always
selected through the seniority system. Seniority
system: A system, until modified and reformed in the 1970s, that resulted
in those members of the majority party in a house of Congress with longest
continuous service on a committee automatically becoming heads of committees.
(p. 548) Consequently, up until 1975, most of the congressional power was
held by the chairs of the standing committees. Example: Sen. Strom Thurmond.
(2) The system also gave
a decisive edge to members from "safe" congressional districts, where members
were seldom challenged for reelection. Consequently, "safe" seats are usually
won by the incumbent by a very large margin.
(2) Today, seniority remains the general rule for selecting chairs, but there have been notable exceptions.
(3) These and other reforms have somewhat reduced
the clout of the chairs.
2. A congressional caucus is a group of members of Congress sharing some interest or characteristic, such as the Black Caucus, the Hispanic Caucus, the Congresswomens Caucus, and the Sunbelt Caucus. Caucuses include regional groupings, ideological groupings, and economic groupings. DO NOT confuse a congressional caucus with a political caucus!
3. The proliferation of congressional caucuses
(about 130 as of late) gives members of Congress an informal, yet strong
say in the policy agenda. Composed of three goals: reelection, influence
in Congress, and the legislative insiders who share similar concerns, the
caucuses exert a much greater influence on policymaking than most citizen-based
interest groups can.
2. After subcommittees complete their work, the
measure returns to the full committee.
b. The full committee may refuse to report the bill, or pigeonhole it. A discharge petition enables members to force a bill out of a committee pigeonhole.
c. The full committee may report the bill in an amended form.
d. The full committee may report the bill unfavorably.
e. The full committee may report an entirely new
bill.
2. In order to be debated on the floor, the House
Rules Committee must give each bill a rule, or approval for its appearance
on the floor (unless the bill is privileged or the rules are suspended),
as well as the conditions under which a bill can be debated on the floor
of the House of Representatives.. The House Rules Committee can kill a
bill even after it has been recommended by a standing committee by refusing
to perform any of the above.
2. Debate — Strict rules limit the length of each individual's debate.
3. Voting — A bill requires formal House vote
on it and on various amendments that might be attached to it. A quorum
is necessary. A quorum is the majority of the
full membership of either house. A floor vote may be taken in varous way.
b. A standing vote may be demanded if any member thinks the Speaker has erred in judging a voice vote. Standing (division) vote: A vote in the House of Representatives in which members for or against a bill stand up for a head count. (p. 567)
c. One-fifth of a quorum may demand a teller vote.
d. A roll-call vote may be demanded by one-fifth
of the members.Roll-call vote: A vote in which
each representative's position becomes a matter of public record. (pp.
567-568)
2. A signed bill is then sent from the House to the president of the Senate.
2. Senate proceedings are less formal than those
of the House, have only one calendar for bills, and are called to the floor
by the majority floor leader.
2. The Filibuster — The filibuster, which permits unlimited debate on a bill, is a process by which a single senator, or a group of senators, can talk a bill to death, thus blocking votes on proposed legislation. It is a practice that DOES NOT APPLY TO THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, but rather, is used ONLY in the Senate. At the present time, sixty members present and voting can halt a filibuster by invoking cloture (closure) on debate. Cloture is a Senate procedure that allows a filibuster to be ended by a vote of three-fifths (sixty members) of the entire Senate. (p. 573)
3. The Cloture Rule
b. Many senators hesitate to use the cloture rule
for fear that it will limit free debate and it will undermine the effectiveness
of the filibuster technique.
2. Appointees are usually the senior, most powerful
members of each committee and the compromises they reach are usually acceptable
to both houses.
2. The President may sign the bill, veto it, allow
the bill to become law by not signing it within ten days of receiving it
while Congress is in session, or pocket veto the bill by not acting on
it before Congress adjourns.
2. Historically, Congress has overridden only a very small number of presidential vetoes. In over 200 years, there have been approximately 2,500 vetoes and only about a hundred have been overridden.
Chief
Justice Richard Barajas
Advanced Placement U.S. Government and Politics
Cathedral High School, El Paso, Texas
Last updated: April 2002