A User's Guide to Democracy -- The Legislative Branch

The US governmental system is dependent upon the separation of powers and checks and balances. What are these things?

• Separation of powers: the division of government into three separate and distinct branches

• Checks and balances: no branch of the government can be too powerful, and every major power can be checked / blocked by another branch

What two chambers is Congress made up of?

The House of Representatives and the Senate

What did the Great Compromise do?

It ordered that the House of Representatives was proportionate to the population of free inhabitants in each state, while the Senate consisted of two people from each state

How many members are there in the House of Representatives? What do they represent? What are term limits like?

• There are 435 members of the House of Representatives

• Each one of them represents a chunk of a state

• Term limits are two years (every two years, all 435 of them are up for reelection)

What is the main advantage and disadvantage of being in the House?

• Closeness to the people: members of the House are very close to the people because they each represent their smaller Congressional District

How are senators elected?

• There are two people from each state

• A senator is elected for a 6-year term but every 2 years about 1/3 of them are up for election

• Senators are organized according to classes that determine when they're up for reelection

Why do smaller and more conservative states have disproportionate influence, according to this chapter of the book?

• Only a portion of the Senate is up for election at a time, and this can benefit one party if the states voting that year lean in its favor

• Because each state gets two senators regardless of population, smaller and more conservative states have disproportionate influence, which makes the Senate lean more conservative overall

How does a bill become a law?

• Bills are proposed by senators or representatives

• A small percentage get voted on in one chamber, and if they are passed, they go to the other chamber

• If they pass there, they go to the president which either makes them a law or vetoes them

• A veto kills a bill, unless 2/3 of the House and Senate cancel the president's veto and make it a law anyway

What are some things that both Houses can do?

• Initiate constitutional amendments

• Vote on budget resolutions after the president submits a budget request to both Houses

• Pass a resolution to declare war

• Establish or impose taxes for the support of an army

• Coin money, print dollar bills, regulate interstate commerce

• Establish rules about immigration and naturalization

What happens if certain rules aren’t specifically outlined in the Constitution?

• They can be altered by Congress

  • Congress writes its rules, creates new committees / new protocols for bringing bills to the floor, and new rules for the filibuster

What are some of the House of Representatives’ unique powers?

• Initiate money bills: while both Houses initiate bills, only the House of Representatives can initiate bills regarding federal spending

• Break a tie: the House is charged with breaking ties for electoral votes for president

• Initiate impeachment: any member of the House can start it with a resolution — this resolution goes to the House Rules Committee and then the House Committee on the Judiciary, who investigate reasons for impeachment and report back to the House for a vote. It just takes a basic majority of votes to impeach

When may an individual be removed from office in the case of impeachment?

Only if the resolution goes to the Senate and the Senate votes against the individual

What are some of the Senate’s unique powers?

• Confirm appointments: the advice and consent of the Senate allows the president to appoint ambassadors, public ministers, Supreme Court judges, etc. as well as to make treaties

• Try impeachment cases: not applicable to presidential impeachments

• Elect the vice president in case of a tie

What percentage of House bills become law?

3-5%

What is the reality of making bills into law?

• Bills must pass through several committees, where most are stalled or abandoned

• Even if a bill survives, debate on that bill is brief and amendments must be relevant

• Speaker of the House controls the voting schedule, so many bills never make it to a vote before the session ends

  • Way to circumvent the Speaker of the House (or the head of a committee who is stalling the process) involves half (218) of the House signing a literal petition — once 218 signatures have been collected, that bill is taken out of committee and put on the floor for a vote.

Explain some facts about the filibuster.

• Pre- and post-cloture: Before 1917, any member of the Senate could hold the floor as long as they wanted to delay voting on a bill, but the rules were changed in 1917, when "cloture" was established in which debate could be ended immediately if 2/3 of the Senate agreed (because a filibuster would bring the chamber to a total standstill)

• The two-track system: The 1970 Senate put a "two-track" system in place in which another piece of legislation could be on the floor on the same day, with time split between the two -- this weakened the power of the filibuster, but it made filibustering easier to do since you only had to do it for half of the day

• The nuclear option: allows the Senate to bypass the usual 60-vote filibuster rule in certain cases

What is the main point of the inefficiencies in the House and the Senate?

To prevent any radical movement or ideology from taking over and changing everything overnight