Comp Gov: Legislative Branch

What is a constituent? How many constituents does a representative have?

~750K constituents

Constituent = people who representatives represent, whether you voted for them or not

How many members in HOR? How can they change it?

• 435 members

  • Congress can pass a simple law to change the # of representatives

Requirements of HOR / Senate

• HOR

  • 25 years old

  • 2 year term limit

• Senate

  • 30 years old

  • 6 year term limit

  • 1/3 of senate is elected every 2 years

  • Meant to represent the state’s interests, not the peoples’

Incumbent

Person already in seat → incumbency rate in HOR is 95%; it’s a lot lower for the Senate

Different “hats” worn by members of Congress

• Delegate

  • Represents the popular will of the constituents and not their own opinion

• Trustee

  • Represents the wisest, best policy for your constituents, goes based off their own opinion but well-intended

• Politico

  • Represents the policy of the political party first and foremost (party > own opinion > constituents)

• Normal congresspeople are a mix of all 3

House Congressional elections process

1. Reapportionment

2. Redistricting

Reapportionment

• Done at the national level after the census by Congress (every 10 years)

• Nonpartisan (mathematical process)

• Reallocating the seats in the HOR to reflect changes in population

Redistricting

• Done by state legislatures after reapportionment

• Redrawing the congressional lines within a state to reflect changes in population

• Gerrymandering

  • Distorts election results so that a party can win a majority of seats with a minority of the votes

  • Reduces voter power and interest → lower voter interest

  • Insulates incumbents in safe districts, allowing them to prioritize their party’s interests over the needs of the ppl they are representing

  • Dilutes minority representation

  • Perpetuates hyper-partisanship bc when the only meaningful competition occurs in primary elections, candidates are incentivized the appeal to their party’s most extreme voters rather than seeking to find common ground → increases polarization

• Self-sorting

  • When people move, they take political reasons into account → ppl self-sort into political communities

Seminal case vs progeny

• A seminal case is a court decision that is exceptionally influential and provides the foundation for future legal developments. It is often the first or one of the earliest cases to address a specific legal issue. 

• Progeny = all cases that come after the seminal case

Limits on gerrymandering

• Baker v Carr

  • Seminal case

  • Federal courts are granted original jurisdiction to hear state redistricting cases

  • If an individual says that their voting rights are being violated under the Equal Protections Clause, then their sue gets sent to Federal Court, not to a state court where they will probably lost

• Progeny of Baker

  • “One person one vote” = each congressional district must have roughly equal population

• Districts may not be drawn solely on the basis of race (Voting Rights Act of 1965 + Shaw v Reno)

  • Districts CAN gerrymander based on politics

• Districts must contiguous (even if its just a freeway connecting the two)

What did that one article argue about the purpose of gerrymandering?

You don’t gerrymander to give yourself a collection of overwhelmingly safe seats, rather it’s to give your opponents a small number of safe seats while drawing yourself a larger number of seats aren’t as safe but you can still expect to win

Single-member district

multiple people in a district, but only one is chosen (winner takes all) → 3rd party always loses

Proportional representation

If dems get 40% of the vote, they have 40% of members…etc

Presidential succession

1. President

2. VP

3. Speaker of the House

4. President Pro Tempore

5. Secretary of State

HOR leadership

• Speaker of the House

  • The republican conference/democratic caucus selects a leader, then every in House comes together and picks a speaker

• Majority leaders

• Majority whip

• Minority leader

• Minority whip

• Committee chairs

• Rank and file members

Senate leadership

• President = Vice President

• President Pro Tempore

  • Most senior member of the majority party

• Majority leader (most powerful person in the Senate)

• Majority whip

• Minority leader

• Minority whip

• Committee chairs

• Rank and file members

Debate in the Senate

• No rules → filibuster

  • Purpose: delay a vote on legislation

  • 1st hour has to be something relevant to the topic

  • Afterwards, you can talk abt whatever u want

  • To stop a filibuster, you need 3/5 votes in the Senate, called a cloture

Debate in the House

• Speaker of House/rules committee has a lot of power: they set the rules for debate

  • ex: “You can only talk for 2 minutes and that’s it” → can’t filibuster

Committees in Congress: purpose

• Reduce delegate workload

  • You don’t want all members focused on one thing; committees help spread out issues and work on different things

• Foster expertise/specialization

  • Ppl on the farming committee understanding farming policy → more efficient that they are on a committee than someone from a different committee working on a farm bill (all day they look at farming bills)

• Increases efficiency

Chair of committee

• Chair = leader

• Always from the majority party in that chamber

• Custom: chosen by seniority rule

  • Majority party member w/ the longest service in that committee is selected as chair

  • Doesn’t have to be followed; Speaker ultimately decides committee chairs

How parties are represented in committees

• Proportional representation of chamber

  • In committees, parties are represented in the same proportion as in the chamber

  • If the chamber has 55 Dems, then every committee will have 55% dems

  • All committees are controlled by majority party

  • Chair = from majority party

Subcommittees

• Further reduces delegate workload, fosters expertise, increases efficiency

Joint committee

• Members from House and Senate

  • 1 example type: Conference committee- purpose is to smooth out the language of a bill if it doesn’t match btwn the House and Senate once it passes through both chambers

Standing committees

• Permanent committees that continue from one session of Congress to the next

• ex: there’s always an appropriations committee

Special/select committee

• Called for emergency reasons, not permanent, usually to investigate stuff

  • 9/11 committee

  • Jan 6 committee

  • House Unamerican Activites Committees

Committees to Know

• House

  • Appropriations Committee (also senate)

    • Appropriate money

  • Rules Committee

    • Every single bill that goes through the House must go through the Rules Committee, who decide the rules that follow the bill

    • Open rule = allow amendments to be added, debates to occur in the chamber

    • Closed rule = no amendments, no debates, send it to the floor right now and vote on it. This fast-tracks it, passes it quicker, increases chances it will pass

  • Ways and Means Committees

    • In charge of revenue bills & tax legislation

    • Any bill can start in either chamber, but any bill dealing w/ revenue and tax HAS to originate in the House Ways and Means Committee

• Senate

  • Judiciary Committee

    • Talks to court nominees

  • Foreign Relations Committees

    • Treaties pass through

  • Armed Services Committees

    • Responsible for US Military personnel + technology

Role of the Whip in Congress

• Whips determine how much internal support there is for a particular bill, motion, proposal, and they use various techniques to secure enough votes to pass/defeat a desired measure

• “Growing the vote” = Build votes through legislator objectives (not just party lines)

  • Achieve valuable goals (getting reelected through campaign assistance)

  • Enacting policy (bringing their bill to the floor for a vote)

  • Achieving influence (help them get assigned to powerful committees)

  • Use sanctions

• Excessive whipping can also make members of a majority party move away from the position desire by the party’s leader

Non-legislative functions of Congress

• Impeachment

  • Anyone in executive/judicial branch can be impeached

• Confirmation process

  • Nomination for high-ranking position → confirmation

  • VP vote if there’s a tie

• Proposing Constitutional amendments

  • Supermajority of both chambers propose

• Oversight (both House/Senate individually, collectively)

  • Hearings (subpoena power; alarm hearing = something happened, now there’s a response; patrolling hearing = just doing general oversight )

  • Investigations

Making a bill: step 1

Draft a bill!

• Anyone can draft any bill, except that revenue/tax has to originate in the House

• Interest groups, factions, executive branch, members of Congress, foreign governments can all write bills; they just have to be introduced by a member of Congress

• Can be introduced into either chamber, or both at the same time

Making a bill: step 2

• Bill gets sent to the right committee

  • Revenue/tax has to be sent to the House Ways and Mean Committee

  • It’s not a hard and set rule; the bill can go to an committee, and that’s up to party leadership

making a bill: step 3

• Committee sends the bill to the subcommittee, who may send it to a subsubcommittee

• There’s hearings, markups, you talk to interest groups, executive branch, they make changes before it goes to full committee

Subsubcommitte/subcommittee power

• Sub/subsubcommittees actually make decisions

• In a majority-controlled subcommittee, there might be 8 or 10 members, 6 republicans, 4 democrats → there’s probably 1 Republican who isn’t as strong on the vote

• If you’re a lobbyist in favor of military spending, that’s the Congressperson you lobby (they target the subcommittee member who’s on the fence)

• After the subsubcommittee denies a bill, it gets sent back to the subcommittee, who denies it, who sends it to the committee, who denies it, who sends it to the chamber, who denies it (there’s only one chance for a bill)

• Any committee or subcommittee chair can simply pull the bill out of circulation → “pigeonhole it”, where it stays forever unless there’s a “discharge petition” (a majority of the chamber has to tell the chair to take the bill out of the pigeonhole to vote on it → the chair person is the majority, so the majority of the chamber (majority party) will not go against the chair

making a bill: step 4

Vote to report the bill → goes to committee, who then can send it to the full chamber or not

making a bill: step 5

• House side: After it goes through the House, it goes through the Rules Committee

• Senate doesn’t have an equivalent

making a bill: step 6

• Debate

  • Regular debate (House) - rules set by Speaker

  • Filibuster/cloture (senate)

making a bill: step 7

vote (majority vote)

making a bill: step 8

• After passing one chamber, it goes to the next house

• If it goes through the chamber, they probably don’t look the same (ex: Senate can add stuff/remove stuff)

making a bill: step 9

• Conference committee (joint committee) matches up the language so the 2 bills are identical, resolving any differences

making a bill: step 10

• After going through the Conference Committee, it gets sent back to BOTH chambers for a final vote

making a bill: step 11

Sent to president

• Option 1: signs the bill → becomes law

• Option 2: veto, sent back to chambers and requires a supermajority of both chambers to override

• Option 3: Prez doesn’t do anything, neither signs nor vetoes.

  • Outcome 1: if Congress is in session, it becomes law in 10 days

  • Outcome 2: if Congress is not in session, it is vetoed and Congress can’t do anything bc the session ended. (called a Pocket Veto)

making a bill: step 12

bill is codified (put into law)

• Prez gives the law to the appropriate agency who is enforcing/executing the law

• Congress then serves its oversight capacity (hearings/investigations) to make sure the law is being executed as intended