We The PeopleAn Introduction to American Politics

Essentials Edition

Benjamin Ginsberg Theodore J. Lowi Margaret Weir

9 Congress

Congress: Representing the American People A congressperson’s primary responsibility is to

the district and to his or her constituency (the residents in the area from which an official is elected).

House and Senate

The framers provided for a bicameral (having two chambers or houses) legislature.

The legislative body is made up of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Today, members of the House and Senate are elected by the people.

House and Senate

There are 435 House members elected from districts apportioned according to population.

The 100 Senators are elected by state, with two senators for each.

The two houses play different legislative roles.

Table 9.1

House and Senate

The smaller Senate encourages deliberation and debate.

It discourages specialization on particular issues because Senators serve large, often diverse, statewide constituencies.

In the Senate, less power is concentrated in the leadership’s hands

House and Senate

On the other hand, the larger, more centralized and organized House gives the leadership more legislative control and allows for specialization.

Differences in terms of office and requirements determine how both houses develop their constituencies and exercise their powers.

House and Senate

As a result House members serve as well-organized local interests’ agents, whereas the senators serve as agents to both local and national constituencies.

Sociological versus Agency RepresentationWhat does it mean to “represent” someone or

something? There are two kinds of representation—

sociological and agency.

Sociological Representation

Sociological representation is a type of representation in which representatives have the same racial, gender, ethnic, religious, or educational background as their constituents.

It is based on the principle that if two individuals are similar in background, character, interests, and perspectives, then one could represent the other’s views.

Sociological Representation

The assumption here is that sociological similarity promotes good representation.

Thus, the composition of a properly constituted legislature ought to mirror the society it represents.

Agency Representation

This is the type of representation by which representatives are held accountable to their constituency if they fail to represent it properly.

This is the incentive for good representation when the personal backgrounds, views, and interests of the representative differ from those of his or her constituency.

The Social Composition of the U.S. Congress Congress is not a sociologically representative

assembly. Religious affiliations of members of both

houses are first overwhelmingly Protestant, then Catholic, and then Jewish; this religious distribution is close to the population at large.

The Social Composition of the U.S. Congress Women and minorities in Congress are greatly

underrepresented according to their proportion in the general population.

However, African Americans, women, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans have increased their congressional representation in the past twenty years.

The Social Composition of the U.S. Congress Most members of Congress are lawyers, or

business and industry professionals.

Representatives as Agents

While Congress members do not share their constituents’ (clients’) sociological characteristics, they do work hard to be their clients’ agents and serve their interests in the governmental process.

This can be seen in the constant client/agent communication, and in the House members spending one-third of their time on client service or “case work.”

Representatives as Agents

They often vote along with their district’s interest. Still, many constituents do not have strong views

about every issue. Therefore, representatives are free to act as they

think best.Constituents also influence legislative votes,

however, because representatives that go against district wishes are unlikely to be reelected.

 The Electoral Connection

Two factors related to the electoral system affect who gets elected and what they do in office.

The first is the incumbency advantage and the second is the way congressional district lines are drawn.

Incumbency

This is defined as holding the political office for which one is running.

Incumbents provide constituents with services to ensure re-election.

The services include taking care of individual requests and regular communications with constituents to establish a personal relationship with them.

Incumbency

The success of this strategy is evident in the high reelection rates.

Incumbency can help a candidate by scaring off potential challengers.

The advantage of incumbency preserves the status quo in Congress and keeps the social composition of Congress consistent.

Incumbency

Therefore, supporters of term limits argue that such limits are the only way to get new faces in Congress.

However, because of retirement there is a 10 percent average of congressional turnover during election years.

 Redistricting

The last factor affecting congressional seats is the way congressional districts are drawn.

The number of House seats is set at 435. Apportionment is the process, occurring after

every census, which allocates congressional seats among the fifty states according to population changes.

States whose population grows gain seats and states whose population declines lose seats.

 Redistricting

Redistricting is the process of redrawing election districts and redistributing legislative representatives.

This happens every ten years to reflect population shifts, or in response to legal challenges to existing districts.

 Redistricting

This can be a highly political process because districts can be shaped to create an advantage for the majority party in the legislature, which controls the redistricting process.

For example, after a redistricting in 2000, both Republicans and Democrats challenged the remaps that they viewed as unfair in court.

 Redistricting

After the 1964 Civil Rights Act, race became a major and controversial consideration in redistricting.

However, in the 1995 case of Miller v. Johnson the Supreme Court limited racial redistricting and stated that race cannot be the predominant factor in drawing electoral district lines.

Direct Patronage

Congress members often have the opportunity to provide direct benefits or patronage for their constituents.

Direct Patronage

The most important legislative patronage opportunity is called the pork barrel, a type of appropriation that specifies a project to be funded within a particular district.

The ability bring home “pork” to one’s district contributes positively to a member’s chance of re-election.

Direct Patronage

Congress members introduce “earmarks” in legislation that provide special benefits for their constituents.

Highway bills are a favorite vehicle for congressional pork-barrel spending.

Direct Patronage

In 2007, the House passed a new ethics rule requiring those representatives supporting particular earmarks to identify themselves and guarantee that they had no personal financial stake in the requested project.

The new requirements seem to have had some impact.

Direct Patronage

For example, they cut in half the value of earmarks included in a 2007 military bill, although the reduced earmarks still totaled almost $8 billion.

Direct Patronage

A limited amount of other direct patronage exists.

For example, a form of constituency service is intervention with federal administrative agencies on constituents’ behalf.

A different form of patronage is the private bill—a congressional proposal to provide a specific person with some kind of relief, special privilege, or a special exemption.

Direct Patronage

This privilege is often abused but hard to curtail because it is the easiest, cheapest, and most effective form of congressional patronage and contributes to a member’s re-election chances.

The Organization of Congress

To exercise its power to make the law, Congress must first organize.

The building blocks of congressional organization include the political parties, the committee system, congressional staff, the caucuses, and the parliamentary rules of the House and the Senate.

Each of these play a key role in congressional organization and legislative formulation.

Party Leadership in the House and SenateA caucus is a legislative or political group’s

closed meeting to select candidates, plan strategy, or make decisions regarding legislative matters.

Every two years, at the beginning of a new Congress, each party gathers and elects their House leaders.

House Republicans’ gathering is called the conference. Democrats call their gathering the caucus.

Party Leadership in the House and SenateThe elected majority leader is automatically

elected by the whole House as the Speaker of the House, the chief presiding officer of the House of Representatives.

The Speaker is elected at the beginning of every Congress.

Party Leadership in the House and SenateThe Speaker is the most important party and

House leader, and can influence the legislative agenda, the fate of individual pieces of legislation, and members’ positions within the House and committee assignments.

Party Leadership in the House and SenateThe House majority then elects a majority

leader, while the minority party elects a minority leader.

In the House, the majority leader is subordinate in the party hierarchy to the Speaker of the House.

Both parties also elect whips to line up party members on votes and convey voting information to the leaders.

Party Leadership in the House and SenateIn the Senate the president pro tempore is a

ceremonial position, held by the most senior member of the majority party.

In the Senate the real power lies in the hands of the majority leader and minority leader, who perform tasks equivalent to their counterparts in the House.

Along with these organizational tasks, congressional party leaders may control or try to set the legislative agenda.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressThe committee system is central to

congressional operation. Congress relies on committees to do the work

of building legislation.There are several types of committees

including standing committees, select committees, joint committees, and conference committees.

Table 9.2

The Committee System: The Core of CongressStanding committees

These are permanent in nature. They have the power to propose and write

legislation. The jurisdiction of each standing committee

covers particular subject matter, such as finance, tax, trade, Social Security, and Medicare.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressStanding committees

Among the most important standing committees are those in charge of finances, such as taxation and trade.

Appropriations committees also play important roles because they decide how much funding various programs will actually receive.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressStanding committees

The House Rules committee allots debate time and floor amendments rules.

More will be said later about the importance of this standing committee in the legislative process.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressSelect committees

They are usually temporary legislative committees set up to highlight, investigate, or address a particular issue not within the jurisdiction of existing committees.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressJoint committees

These are legislative committees formed by members of both the House and Senate.

There are four of those committees: economic, taxation, library, and printing.

Joint committees play important information gathering roles.

The Committee System: The Core of CongressConference Committees

These are temporary joint committees created to work out a compromise on the House and Senate versions of a piece of legislation.

These committees are important to reconcile differences between the House and Senate legislation.

Politics and the Organization of Committees Hierarchy

Each committee’s hierarchy is usually based on seniority, an individual’s ranking based on the length of continuous service on a congressional committee.

From time to time, both parties have departed from the seniority system to foster other legislative and electoral goals.

The Staff System: Staffers and AgenciesEvery Congress member employs many staff

members, whose tasks include handling constituency requests and dealing with legislative details and the activities of administrative agencies.

The Staff System: Staffers and AgenciesIn addition to their personal staff, senators and

representatives employ committee staffers who are responsible for administering the committee’s work, such as research, scheduling, and organizing the legislative process.

Rules of Lawmaking: How a Bill Becomes a LawThe rules for congressional procedure are

important to the legislative process. These rules govern the process from the

introduction of a bill all the way to submission to the president for signature.

Committee Deliberation

The first step to pass a law is to draft the bill. These drafts are then submitted to the

appropriate committee for deliberation. Then the committee refers the bill to a

subcommittee. It may hold hearings, hear testimony, and

amend the bill before passing it up to the full committee for mark-up and vote.

Committee Deliberation

Many bills are simply allowed to “die in committee” with little or no serious consideration given to them.

The handful of bills reported out of committees must pass the Rules Committee.

The Rules Committee allots debate time and floor amendments rules.

Debate

The next step in passing a law is debate of the bill on the floor of the House and Senate.

The Speaker of the House and the Senate majority leader have the power of recognition during the bill’s debate.

The House Rules Committee has allotted debate time to be controlled by the bill’s major sponsor and opponent.

Debate

In the Senate, the leadership has less control over floor debate.

Once given the floor, a senator has unlimited time to speak.

Once a bill is debated on the floor of the House and the Senate, the leaders schedule it for a vote on the floor of each chamber.

By this time the bill is expected to pass; otherwise it is not even brought to the floor.

Debate

Senators use a tactic called filibuster to prevent action on legislation they oppose by continuously holding the floor and speaking until the majority backs down.

Once given the floor, senators have unlimited time to speak, and it requires a vote of three-fifths of the senate to end a filibuster.

Debate

This procedure is called cloture, a rule allowing a majority of two-thirds or three-fifths of the members in a legislative body to set a limit on the debate over a given bill.

Conference Committee

The next step is to send the bill to a conference committee to iron out the differences between the versions issued by the different houses.

Once the compromise bill leaves conference, it must pass another floor voting session in each chamber.

Presidential Action

Once a standard version of the bill has been adopted by both the House and Senate, the final step for the bill is to go to the president.

Presidential Action

The President can choose to sign the bill, and then it becomes the law of the land.

The President can also veto the bill. Veto is the president’s constitutional power to turn

down congressional acts.A presidential veto may be overridden by a two-

thirds vote of each house.

Presidential Action

A pocket veto is a presidential veto that is automatically triggered if the president does not act on a given piece of legislation passed during the final ten days of a legislative session.

How Congress Decides

External and internal factors play a role in congressional decision making.

External influences include the legislator’s constituency, interest groups, and political parties.

Internal influences include party leadership, congressional colleges, and the president.

Constituency

Constituency influence is not straightforward. Most constituents do not know what policies

their representatives support. Still, Congress members spend much time

forecasting what policies constituents like, in order to be re-elected

Interest Groups

Interest groups with the ability to mobilize followers can be very influential in decision making.

Party Discipline

Party leaders exert influence over party members’ Congressional behavior. A party vote is a vote in the House or in the Senate

in which at least 50 percent of the members of one party take a particular position and are opposed by at least 50 percent of the members of the other party.

Party Discipline

Party votes are rare today, although they were common in the nineteenth century.

Roll-call vote is a vote in which each legislator’s yes or no vote is recorded as the clerk calls the names of the members alphabetically.

Party Discipline

Congressional party unity has increased in the last decade as the two major parties have taken deeply divided positions on various issues such as abortion, the minimum wage, school vouchers, affirmative action, and many more.

Party Discipline

Party unity is a product of shared ideology and background, plus party leadership and organization.

Resources regularly used by party leaders to secure party members’ voting support include committee assignments, access to the floor, the whip system, logrolling, and the presidency.

Committee Assignments

By helping members get favorable committee assignments, leaders create “debts” that members want to repay.

 Access to the Floor

Floor time allocation is controlled by party leadership (the Speaker and majority leaders recognize members to talk on the floor) in both the House and Senate.

 The Whip System

The whip communication network takes polls of members to learn their voting intentions.

This enables leaders to know how support for the bill stands.

This system helps to keep party unity in both houses and allows leaders to be selective about when they need to exert pressure on members.

Logrolling

The term defines the legislative practice wherein agreements are made between legislators in voting for or against a bill (“I’ll support you if you support me”).

The Presidency

The most important influence is presidential. Support of the president is a criterion for party

loyalty, and party leaders are able to use it to rally some members.

Beyond Legislation: Other Congressional Powers Legislation is not the only form of influence

Congress has in governing. Congress has other powers including the

Senate’s treaty and appointment power and many others.

Oversight

Through hearings, investigations, and other techniques, Congress exercises control over the activities of executive agencies.

This means Congress supervises how legislation is carried out by the executive branch.

Oversight

During hearings about appropriations—the amounts of money approved by Congress in bills that each unit or agency of government can spend— most agencies are subject to oversight.

Committees have the power to investigate when fraud, waste, and abuse are found, and bring criminal charges for contempt and perjury.

Advice and Consent: Special Senate PowersThe Constitution grants the president the

power to make treaties and to appoint top executive and judicial officers only “with the advice and consent of the Senate”.

For treaties, a two-thirds consent is needed; for appointments a simple majority is required.

Impeachment

Impeachment is the formal charge by the House of Representatives that a government official has committed “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The Constitution grants this power to the Congress.

Impeachment

During an impeachment, the House acts as the grand jury by voting on whether to convict and forcibly remove the person from office, which requires a two-thirds Senate majority vote.

This considerable power is an effective safeguard against the executive tyranny so feared by the founders.

This concludes the Lecture PowerPoint Presentation for Chapter 9

We The PeopleAn Introduction to American PoliticsEssentials Edition

Seventh Edition

Benjamin Ginsberg

Theodore J. Lowi

Margaret Weir

Copyright © 2009 W. W. Norton & Company