Slides 6: Congress: Structures, powers, and the legislative process

Core Functions and Representational Conflicts

• Primary Functions:

  • Representation: Advocating for the interests of local and national constituents.

  • Lawmaking: Creating policies to address societal issues and maintain government operations.

  • Partisanship: Aligning with political parties that shape worldviews, define issues, and structure solutions.

• Inherent Tension:

  • Representation frequently conflicts with lawmaking because local constituency demands clash with broad national interests.

  • Members routinely prioritize local voter demands to secure re-election, which can lead to the neglect of collective national lawmaking.

  • Citizens generally express low approval of Congress as an institution while consistently supporting their own individual representatives.

• Hyper-Partisanship:

  • Ideological polarization has grown since the $1990\text{s}$, making parties more ideologically homogenous.

  • Representatives face intense pressure to demonstrate ideological purity to satisfy radical party bases (e.g., Tea Party in $2009$, MAGA in $2016$), undermining the compromise required for governance.

The Four Types of Representation

• Policy Representation: Advancing legislation beneficial to the economic well-being of a home district or state (e.g., representatives from Texas and Oklahoma limiting anti-pollution rules; Great Plains representatives defending grain subsidies).

• Allocative Representation: Directing federal funds, services, and designated projects back to the home district:

  • Known as "pork barrel" projects or earmarks (e.g., funding infrastructure projects like roads and bridges regardless of national necessity).

• Casework: Intervening with federal agencies and bureaucratic programs to resolve personal administrative issues for constituents, styling members as protectors against federal bureaucracy.

• Symbolic Representation: Projecting shared values, local patriotism, and cultural identity with constituents through attendance at local events, speech mannerisms, or emphasizing working-class roots.

House vs. Senate Comparison

• Constitutional Differences:

  • House of Representatives: $2$-year terms; minimum age of $25$; minimum $7$ years of U.S. citizenship; apportionment varies based on state population.

  • Senate: $6$-year terms; minimum age of $30$; minimum $9$ years of U.S. citizenship; fixed representation ($2$ per state).

• Organizational Differences:

  • House: $435$ voting members; $20$ standing committees; characterized by strict rules, formalized structure, and rigid hierarchy.

  • Senate: $100$ voting members; $16$ standing committees; characterized by less formal rules and decentralized authority.

• Electoral Differences:

  • House: Average winner spending is $1.37\text{ million}$; most expensive campaign was $7.3\text{ million}$; incumbency advantage stands at $95\%$.

  • Senate: Average winner spending is $8.5\text{ million}$; most expensive campaign was $21.8\text{ million}$; incumbency advantage stands at $83\%$.

• Institutional Responsibilities:

  • All revenue/budget bills must originate in the House.

  • The House votes to impeach federal officials; the Senate conducts the trial and holds the sole power of removal.

  • The Senate exercises exclusive "advice and consent" powers to confirm presidential appointments and ratify treaties.

Checks, Balances, and Oversight Powers

• Checks on the Executive:

  • Passing legislation and overriding presidential vetoes via a $2/3$ vote in both chambers.

  • Conducting legislative oversight via committee hearings to investigate administrative performance and prevent executive agencies (e.g., EPA, SEC) from undue industry capture.

  • Senate approval is required for cabinet secretaries, ambassadors, and federal judges.

• Checks on the Judiciary:

  • Establishing lower federal courts and determining court sizes and judicial salaries.

  • Defining statutory court jurisdictions and limiting judicial sentencing discretion.

  • Senate confirms all federal judicial nominations.

Congressional Apportionment and Gerrymandering

• Seat Allocation:

  • Each House member represents approximately $710{,}000$ constituents.

  • Reapportionment: Allocation of the $435$ House seats among states is recalibrated every $10$ years following the federal census.

  • Redistricting: State legislatures redraw boundary lines to satisfy equal population requirements ("one citizen = one vote").

• Gerrymandering Practices:

  • Drawing district boundaries to favor a specific political faction (originated under Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry in $1812$).

  • Partisan Gerrymandering: Using "cracking" (diluting opposing voters across several districts) and "packing" (concentrating opposing voters into one super-majority district).

  • Racial Gerrymandering: Manipulating boundaries to dilute or artificially isolate minority voting power.

Elections, Trends, and Demographics

• Electoral Influences:

  • Incumbency Advantage: Access to donor networks, established campaign infrastructure, public record, and name recognition ensure high re-election rates ($95\%$ in party nominations).

  • Coattail Effect: Congressional candidates benefiting from voter turnout driven by a successful presidential candidate of the same party.

  • Midterm Loss: The president's party routinely loses congressional seats during midterms, particularly across competitive "purple" swing states.

• Congressional Demographics:

  • Overwhelmingly composed of an educational and financial elite: approximately $3/4$ hold higher education degrees (compared to $8\%$ of the general population), and many are millionaires.

  • Professional backgrounds are dominated by lawyers, civil servants, and business executives.

  • Minorities and women remain historically underrepresented relative to overall population shares.

Congressional Leadership and the Committee System

• Party Leadership:

  • Speaker of the House: Presiding officer chosen by the majority party; controls calendar, floor debate, and committee referrals.

  • Senate Leadership: Presided over officially by the Vice President of the United States; daily business guided by the Senate Majority Leader.

  • Whips: Enforce party communication and count votes; maintain party discipline, though individual constituent loyalty often limits strict enforcement.

• Committees:

  • Divide legislative labor and foster policy specialization among members.

• Standing Committees: Permanent bodies focused on designated policy jurisdictions ($20$ in House, $16$ in Senate).

• House Rules Committee: Schedules bills and establishes terms of floor debate and amendment rules.

• Select Committees: Temporary committees formed to investigate specific events or crises (e.g., $9/11$, COVID-$19$).

• Joint Committees: Combined House-Senate groups formed to expedite shared administrative actions.

• Conference Committees: Reconcile divergent House and Senate versions of a single bill into uniform language.

The Legislative Process and Gridlock

• Stages of Lawmaking:

  • Agenda Setting: Driven by executive requests, crisis events, or member policy entrepreneurship.

  • Committee Markup: Hearings, expert witness testimony, revisions, and committee vote.

  • Floor Debate:

  • House debate is constrained by Rules Committee guidelines.

  • Senate allows unlimited debate and filibusters; invoking cloture to end debate requires a $3/5$ supermajority ($60$ votes).

  • Voting & Reconciliation: Adoption via roll-call vote; differing chamber texts are resolved in conference committees, creating omnibus bills to build broad coalitions.

  • Presidential Action: The President may sign the bill, issue a veto, or exercise a pocket veto. Vetoes are overridden by a $2/3$ vote in both chambers.

• Institutional Gridlock:

  • The legislative system features multiple veto points, making it considerably easier to defeat legislation than to enact it.

  • The constitutional design deliberately slows legislative action to prevent sudden, radical changes and guard against executive tyranny.