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The Constitution provides for a president pro tempore to preside over the Senate in the absence of the vice president.
official chair, but since the job has no real powers, the job of presiding over the Senate is usually given to a junior senator. |
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| The House Rules Committee considers all bills reported from policy and fiscal committees and determines whether, and in what order, to schedule their consideration on the floor of the House. The Rules Committee also reviews, adopts and schedules consideration of floor resolutions. |
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| Impeachment in the United States is an expressed power of the legislature that allows for formal charges against a civil officer of government for crimes committed in office. |
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| Franking benefits, immunity: legal protection, can raise their salary but could hurt them |
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| Members refer to the people who live in their Congressional district or state as their "constituents." |
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| The only procedure by which the Senate can vote to place a time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter, and thereby overcome a filibuster. Under the cloture rule (Rule XXII), the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours, but only by vote of three-fifths of the full Senate, normally 60 votes. |
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| legal protection: Its intended purpose is to prevent a President or other officials of the Executive branch from having members arrested on a pretext to prevent them from voting a certain way or otherwise taking actions with which he or she might disagree. |
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| "Apportionment" is the process of dividing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the House of Representatives among the 50 states--Census Bureau conducts the census at 10-year intervals. |
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| established direct election of United States Senators by popular vote. |
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the meeting of a Committee held to review the text of a bill before reporting it out.
Committee members offer and vote on proposed changes to the bill's language, known as amendments. Most mark-ups end with a vote to send the new version of the bill to the floor for final approval. |
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| differences between House and Senate |
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House: 455 members, 2 year terms, debate limited to 1 hour, more formal and impersonal.
Senate: 100 members, 6 year terms, unlimited debate unless cloture invoked, filibuster, |
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| Vise President of the U.S. A vice-president can vote only in case of a tie and seldom attends Senate sessions |
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| most influential person in the Senate, and has the right to be the first senator heard on the floor. The majority leader determines the Senate's agenda and usually has much to say about committee assignments. The majority leader may consult with the minority leader in setting the agenda, but the minority leader generally only has as much say as the majority leader is willing to allow. |
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| members of Congress monitoring Executive Branch activities |
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| 30 years old, citizens for 9 years, legal resident of state they represent |
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| the practice of talking a bill to death. Although one-man filibusters are dramatic, usually several senators who oppose a bill will agree together to block legislation through delay tactics, such as having the roll called over and over again |
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| benefit of being able to send free mail |
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| Appointments to all positions in the National Government which require the advice and consent of the Congress shall be made in the following manner: |
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| reelected about 90% of the time, name recognition, always going to be problems, campaign costgs, franking, port projects, seniority powers, party support, casework |
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| they handle bills in different policy areas, thus shaping legislation it a very critical point. The Senate and the House have separate standing committees: the Senate currently has 16 and the House has 19. The numbers may fluctuate slightly, but they tend to "stand" for a long time. |
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| Assisting each floor leader are the party whips, who serve as go-betweens for the members and the leadership. They inform members when important bills will come up for a vote, do nose-counts for the leadership, and pressure members to support the leadership. |
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| backgrounds of Congress people |
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| male, educated, high-income backgrounds, white |
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| they are formed exclusively to hammer out differences between House and Senate versions of similar bills. A bill goes to a conference committee after it has been approved in separate processes in the two houses, and a compromise bill is sent back to each house for final approval. |
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| congressional term limits |
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| house is two year terms and senate is six year terms |
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| Every ten years following the release of new census data, legislative districts are adjusted to reflect updated population numbers so that districts remain of relatively equal population. Unfortunately, all too often, the people responsible for redistricting are the same legislators who are elected to represent the districts. This creates an obvious conflict of interest, which often manifests itself in contorted lines that are meant to further the interests of incumbents and their political parties rather than the people they represent. Redistricting is such a powerful tool that representatives can often guarantee their reelection, or in other words, representatives select voters rather than voters elect representatives. |
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| This common practice was originally meant to give one political party an advantage over the other. District boundaries are drawn in strange ways in order to make it easy for the candidate of one party to win election in that district). |
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| procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. |
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| Appropriations of public funds by Congress (or other legislative assemblies) for projects that do not serve the interests of any large portion of the country's citizenry but are nevertheless vigorously promoted by a small group of legislators because they will pump outside taxpayers' money and resources into the local districts these legislators represent. Successful promotion of such pork-barrel legislation (often through skillful logrolling) is very likely to get the legislator re-elected by his constituents. |
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| two-House Congress: House of Representatives and Senate |
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| the more detailed committees under primary committees. members are specialists in certain areas which places them in a certain subcommittee |
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