Chapter 11 (Congress)

Explain how long senators serve for, when they are re-elected, and how they are elected.

• Six-year terms, all staggered so that 1/3 of the senate is re-elected every two years.

• They are currently elected by popular vote, after a history of election by the state legislatures.

Define reapportionment, when it is done, and its relationship towards the House.

• It is the redistribution of representatives among the states based on population change, taking place after each census every 10 years.

Explain the powers that differ between the House and the Senate.

• All financial/revenue bills must start in the House, and the House has the right to impeach (i.e. formally charging a government official with a crime) while the Senate tries the impeachment with the company of the Supreme Court’s chief justice and a 2/3rds majority vote required to convict the president.

Define the “incumbency effect” and state its causes. Define gerrymandering.

• It is the repeated re-election of incumbents for a long time of history.

• Gerrymandering is one of its causes, where officials repeatedly redraw district lines to support their own political party.

• Name recognition — people get used to and connected to one candidate’s name due to their repeated sharing of their personal lives.

• Casework — i.e. solving problems for constituents, particularly problems involving government agencies

• Campaign financing — PACs tend to prefer incumbents when it agrees with both candidates

What is descriptive representation?

• A belief that constituents are most effectively represented by legislators who are similar to them in key demographics (i.e. race, ethnicity, religion, etc..)

Explain the reason for women having a smaller presence in U.S legislature. Are there more or fewer women in Congress compared to other developed nations?

• Women that develop professionally are often not encouraged to work as politicians in the way men are

• Substantially fewer.

Define racial gerrymandering and its success.

• It is the drawing of a legislative district to maximize the chance that a minority candidate will win an election, specifically racial minorities.

• It has been largely unsuccessful due to being deemed unconstitutional and discriminatory.

Explain the legislative billmaking process.

• A bill is introduced in either the House or the Senate and then assigned to the committee that takes jurisdiction over that policy area, which then sends it to a subcommittee to evaluate the bill. If passed, it is sent to the full committee, and if passed, it is sent to the whole membership of the chamber to be debated and discussed, and either passed or defeated.

Explain the four types of committees.

• Standing committee — A permanent congressional committee that specializes in a certain policy area, doing most of the work on a bill. Often broken down into further subcommittees

• Joint committee — A committee made up of members of both the House and the Senate. Much weaker than standing committees since they cannot directly report bills to either chamber, instead focusing on fact-finding problems that fall within their jurisdiction

• Select committee — A temporary congressional committee created for a specific purpose (ex. overlapping jurisdictions) and disbanded after that purpose is fulfilled

• Conference committee — A temporary committee created to work out differences between the House and the Senate’s versions of a specific piece of legislation, typically consisting of the committee members who originally crafted/reported the legislation

Define seniority.

• An honorary “status” obtained by years of consecutive service on a particular congressional committee

Define Congressional oversight and the ways in which it is implemented.

• The process of reviewing the operations of an agency to determine whether it is carrying out policies as Congress intended.

• It implements it through hearings and requesting reports on specific agency practices.

Describe the roles of majoritarianism and pluralism in Congress.

• Pluralism is seen in how there are multiple committees across multiple policy areas, but majoritarianism shows up in how bills require majority vote to pass through and

Who is the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the house and senate?

• The presiding officer of the House of Representatives.

• The majority leader is the head of the majority party in the Senate/the second-highest ranking member of the majority party in the House.

Define a filibuster, a cloture, and a hold.

• It is a delaying tactic used in the Senate where a very long speech is given to prevent action on a piece of legislation.

• A cloture is the mechanism by which a filibuster in the senate is cut off (requiring sixty senators to invoke), and a hold is a letter requesting that a bill be held from floor debate (used by the senator to signal their intent to filibuster).

List all parts of the legislative environment and whether they fall more in line with majoritarianism or pluralism.

• Political Parties

• The President

• Constituents

• Interest Groups

• (The final part of this question is unanswered)

Differentiate between the trustee and delegate model of representation and the caveats behind the latter.

• A trustee is a representative who is obligated to consider the views of the constituents but is not obligated to vote according to those views if he or she believes they are misguided.

• A delegate is a legislator whose primary responsibility is to represent the majority view of his or her constituents, regardless of his or her own views.

  • Most legislators act on delegates for issues that their constituents really care about, but the constituents’ opinions tend to be very unclear.

Define a parliamentary system of democracy and whether it is more majoritarian or pluralist.

• A system of government in which the chief executive is the leader whose party holds the most seats in the legislature after an election or whose party forms a major part of the ruling coalition, thereby making the legislative branch the dominant branch of government. Since citizens vote for legislators, their influence on the chief executive is only indirect.

• It is more majoritarian than the U.S congress.

Define a markup.

• Federal funds that are appropriated by Congress for use on local projects.

Give three examples of committees in Congress.

• House Committee on Appropriations (Handles legislation that allocates federal funds and regulates government expenditures)

• Senate Committee on the Judiciary (Oversees Department of Justice, reviews judicial&executive nominations, and handles matters related to federal law, crime, and immigration)

• House Committee on Energy and Commerce (Handles issues related to energy policy, healthcare, and consumer protection).

Explain the rules committee in the house and how the final step of bills before getting sent to the floor differs from that of the senate.

• The house has committee called "rules committee" where every bill that goes to the floor of the house must come out of the rules committee and the rules committee must be interacted with first

• The senate, on the other hand, does not have a rules committee. The bill only gets to the floor with the consent of the majority leader (unlike the House which requires the bill to go through the rules committee first)