Congress

The US Constitution describes the powers and limitations of Congress, but says surprisingly little about how Congress should be organized, how bills should become laws, or what roles political parties should play. All of these questions have been answered over time as new legislative problems have emerged.

In this activity

Each group will be presented with problems that Congress has faced and will come up with a reasonable solution. The class will then discuss how closely that relates to how Congress now operates.

Problem: Who’s in charge?

The House consists of 435 people smart and ambitious enough to get into Congress, the Senate 100 people who are smart, ambitious, and even more politically experienced

With so many ambitious leaders in one place – who leads these hundreds of leaders?

Solution: party leaders

Speaker (only in the House) – elected by the members (always a member of the majority party) Nancy Pelosi

Majority leader (in House and Senate) -- elected by the members (always a member of the majority party) Steny Hoyer/Harry Reid

Minority leader (in House and Senate) -- elected by members of the minority party – John Boehner/Mitch McConnell

Problem: Things get complicated

As society becomes increasingly complicated and technical, members of Congress often find that they do not have the expertise to consider some legislation.

Solution: Standing committees

Specialized committees in both the House and Senate are established to handle bills in specific subject areas.

(egs bills of farming go to the Agriculture Committee, bills on taxation go to Way and Means, spending bills go to the Appropriations Committee)

Members often stay in the same committees for years

Problem: Committee envy

Members all want to be on the most-powerful committees. The most sought-after committees have to do with spending (appropriations) and taxing (ways and means).

Solution: Party leaders

The majority party allocates committee seats according to party (with the majority party giving itself more than 50 percent of the seats in every committee – example the House Ways and Means committee has 24 Republicans and 17 Democrats)

Members then request what committees they would like to be on

The House Speaker and Senate Majority Leader allocate seats to majority party members

The Minority Leaders (in the House and Senate) allocate seats to minority party members

Problem: So many bills, so little time

Members of Congress submit far more bills than can be voted on by the entire House or Senate.

Solution: Committees

Bills are first assigned to a committee where they are first debated and voted on -- most of them die in committee

If the bills get out of committee, they are then scheduled by:House – Order of bills appearing on the floor set by SpeakerSenate – informal negotiations with party leaders, committee

chairs and bill sponsorsIf a bill is scheduled too late in a session it may never be

voted on by the whole Congress and will die

Problem: Talk, Talk

So many members want to speak on important legislation for prolonged periods that fewer bills are being considered.

Solution: Scheduling

In the House (with 435 members) debates before the whole House could last weeks so the Speaker (through the Rules Committee) schedules how long bill be debated. Main advocates/opponents for bill specify specifics

In the Senate (with 100 members) the tradition is that Senators may speak as long as they would like (so long as recognized) -- creates the filibuster where a Senator stalls a vote on a bill by refusing to give up the floor for a vote

Problem: The House is getting too big

In 1790 there was one member of the house for every 33,000 citizens, but as the US grew that became unworkable (The US House would have about 9,000 members if something hadn’t been changed)

Solution: Limit the House

The number of house seats was fixed at 435 in 1911But to make sure the number of house seats

allocated to each state reflects their population we have a three-step process

Census – How big is each state?Reapportionment – How many states should each

state get (about 1 per 700,000 people)?Redistricting – How can the boundary lines be drawn

so each district contains roughly the same number of people

Impact of this system

House, continued Representation approx. proportionate to population; about 700,000

constituents each Most populous district is Nevada’s 3rd District; 960,000 people

represented by one member. All of Montana’s 958,000 people likewise have just one vote in the

House. 523,000 in Wyoming get one vote 527,000 in one of Rhode Island’s two districts and the 531,000 in

the other Impossible to divide equally. Some discussion lately as to whether or not to add more

Representatives

Senate

California: 18.5 million people represented per Senator

Wyoming: about 266,000 people represented per Senator

Oregon: 1.9 million people represented per Senator