In This Chapter

Chapter Outline

Congress Represents the American People

1. Congress is the most important representative institution in American government. Each member’s primary responsibility is to the district, that is, to his or her constituency (the people in the district from which an official is elected).
2. The framers of the Constitution provided for a bicameral legislature, a legislative body consisting of two chambers or houses. The 435 members of the House are elected from districts apportioned according to population; the 100 members of the Senate are elected by state, with two senators from each. Senators have much longer terms in office and usually represent much larger and more diverse constituencies than do their counterparts in the House.
3. House members are more attuned to localized, narrow interests in society, whereas senators are better able than House members to represent statewide or national interests.
4. Sociological representation takes place when representatives have the same racial, ethnic, religious, or educational backgrounds as their constituents. The assumption is that sociological similarity helps to promote good representation. Thus, the composition of a properly constituted representative assembly should mirror the composition of society.
5. Agency representation takes place when constituents have the power to hire and fire their representatives. If representatives can somehow be punished or held to account for failing to represent their constituents properly, then they have incentive to provide good representation even if their own personal backgrounds, views, and interests differ from those of their constituents.
6. Congress is not sociologically representative because it is not a microcosm of American society.
7. Members of Congress frequently communicate with constituents and devote a great deal of staff time to constituency service.
8. Electoral motivations have a strong impact on both sociological and agency representation in Congress.
9. Incumbency affords members of Congress resources such as constituency service and mailing to help secure re-election.
10. Members of Congress can supply benefits to constituents by passing pork-barrel legislation. Pork-barrel votes are exchanged by members of Congress for votes on others’ issues.

The Organization of Congress Is Shaped by Party

1. At the beginning of each Congress, Democrats and Republicans gather to select their leaders. The leader of the majority party in the House of Representatives is elected Speaker of the House by a strict party-line vote.
2. In the Senate, the president pro tempore serves as the presiding officer, although the majority and minority leaders control the calendar and agenda of the Senate.
3. The committee system provides Congress with a second organizational structure that is more a division of labor than the party-based hierarchies of power.
4. With specific jurisdiction over certain policy areas and the task of processing proposals of legislation into bills for floor consideration, standing committees are the most important arenas of congressional policy making.
5. Power within committees is based on seniority, although the seniority principle is not absolute.
6. Each member of Congress has a personal staff that deals with constituency requests and, increasingly, with the details of legislative and administrative oversight.

Rules of Lawmaking Explain How a Bill Becomes a Law

1. Committee deliberation is necessary before floor action on any bill.
2. Many bills receive little or no committee or subcommittee action; they are allowed to “die in committee.”
3. Bills reported out of committee in the House must be through the House Rules Committee before they can be debated on the floor. The Rules Committee allots the time for floor debate on a bill and the conditions under which a bill may (or may not) be amended.
4. In the Senate, rules of debate are much less rigid. In fact, senators may delay Senate action on legislation by refusing to yield the floor, known as a filibuster. The votes of three-fifths of the Senate, or sixty votes, are needed to end a filibuster; this procedure is called cloture. The filibuster has become so common that it takes 60 votes (instead of a simple majority of 51) to pass anything in the Senate.
5. Conference committees are often required to reconcile House and Senate versions of bills that begin with similar provisions but emerge with significant differences.
6. After being adopted by the House and the Senate, a bill is sent to the president, who may choose to sign the bill or veto it. Congress can override a president’s veto by a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate.

Several Factors Influence How Congress Decides

1. Creating a legislative agenda, drawing up a list of possible measures, and deciding among them is a complex process in which a variety of influences from inside and outside government play important roles.
2. Interest groups can influence congressional decision making by mobilizing followers in congressional districts, setting the agenda, or writing legislative language.
3. Party discipline is still an important factor in congressional voting, despite its decline throughout the twentieth century.
4. Party unity is typically greater in the House than in the Senate. Party unity on roll-call votes has increased in recent sessions of Congress.
5. The influence of the presidency is probably the most important of all the resources that maintain party discipline in Congress.

Much Congressional Energy Goes to Tasks Other Than Lawmaking

1. Oversight refers to the effort by Congress—through hearings, investigations, and other techniques—to exercise control over the activities of executive agencies by overseeing or supervising how legislation is carried out by the executive branch. Congress has increasingly used its oversight powers to review actions of agency administrators.
2. The Senate also has the power of approving or rejecting presidential treaties and appointments.
3. Congress has the power to impeach executive and judicial officials.