Steering and Policy Committee. Assists the leader, rounds up votes, heads large forum of deputy and assistant whips. The following is a brief summary: To levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. To borrow money. To regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with Indian tribes. To establish rules for naturalization that is, becoming a citizen and bankruptcy. To coin money, set its value, and punish counterfeiting.
To fix the standard of weights and measures. To establish a post office and post roads. To issue patents and copyrights to inventors and authors. To create courts inferior to that is, below the Supreme Court. To define and punish piracies, felonies on the high seas, and crimes against the law of nations. To declare war. To raise and support an army and navy and make rules for their governance. To provide for a militia reserving to the states the right to appoint militia officers and to train the militia under congressional rule.
To exercise exclusive legislative powers over the seat of government that is, the District of Columbia and over places purchased to be federal facilities forts, arsenals, dockyards, and "other needful buildings.
Vote Smart. Thank You! You are about to be redirected to a secure checkout page. Capitol Visitor Center explains. At the Constitutional Convention of , delegates from Connecticut proposed that the seats in the House be assigned based on population, while the seats in the Senate be assigned two per state.
The Great Compromise or Connecticut Compromise gives each state equal representation in the Senate while ensuring equal representation per citizen in the House. Article I of the Constitution specifies the powers, duties, and responsibilities of each of the two houses of Congress. It lays out the rules for qualifying as a representative, as well as the method by which the seats in the House of Representatives are assigned to the states and how vacancies are filled.
The Constitution affords the House — known as the lower chamber because it has more members than the Senate — much leeway in deciding how it will operate. Originally, the number of representatives was set at 1 per 30, inhabitants, but the representative count has since increased , as the U. House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives website describes. The apportionment was to be based on an enumeration population census that was to be made within three years of the Constitution being ratified approved by the 13 states, and then every 10 years thereafter.
The Apportionment Act of and its successor, the Permanent Apportionment Act of , capped the number of representatives at For this reason, as of the Census, the average number of inhabitants in a congressional district is about , The House of Representatives Archives states that the number of representatives was limited to because the U. The Constitution allows each house of Congress to set its own rules. This has led to divergent practices and procedures in the House and Senate. The Library of Congress summarizes the operating rules of the House of Representatives:.
The House determines whether to impeach and if an impeachment is called for; the Senate decides whether to convict and remove the official from office. This follows a pattern established in the British government and American colonial governments dating back to the 17th century, as the Senate website explains. However, the 17th Amendment, approved in , mandates the direct election of U. As the Senate website explains, the amendment was in response to corruption and other problems that prevented state legislatures from choosing U.
The Senate is known as the upper chamber of Congress because it has fewer members than the House. The Constitution requires that senators be at least 30 years old, U. Senate terms are for six years; the terms are staggered so that approximately a third of all senate seats are up for election every two years. This is intended to protect the Senate from short-term political pressure and to ensure that turnover in the Senate occurs evenly, rather than having stasis for six years followed by upheaval.
As the Senate website indicates, the reason the framers decided to allow each state to be represented by two senators was to prevent the large states from overpowering their smaller counterparts. Benjamin Franklin believed that states should have equal votes in all matters except those involving money.
Article I, Section 8 assigns to the House the power to tax and spend; this clause is described in the following section. The Senate has the constitutional authority to set its own rules, just as the House does. The Constitution makes the vice president the president of the Senate, but the vice president is allowed to vote only to break a tie. The Senate is empowered to choose its own officers and president pro tempore to preside over the Senate when the vice president is unavailable.
An impeachment conviction requires a two-thirds majority vote of the full Senate. However, the powers granted to both houses of Congress are derived from Article I, Section 1, as the Legal Information Institute explains. In the early Supreme Court case McCulloch v.
Paired with this doctrine is the ruling that legislative powers may not be delegated to any other branch of government. Subsequent rulings have modified these two doctrines, resulting in new categories of powers derived from this constitutional foundation. The power to declare war, levy taxes, and regulate commerce are among the congressional powers enumerated in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution.
The taxing and spending clause and the commerce clause have been used to broaden congressional authority over federal tax and economic policy. For example, p residents have tried to expand their power to engage the U. For example, in the period after World War II, presidents committed troops to the Dominican Republic, Laos, and Vietnam, among other countries, without requesting or receiving authorization from Congress.
Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution states that bills intended to raise revenue must originate in the House. This is one of the major differences between the House and Senate.
The Senate is allowed to propose amendments to spending and taxing legislation, just as it can with other bills sent to it from the House. The decision of the framers to allow bills to pass the House after getting a simple majority of votes was motivated by the desire to allow legislation to be enacted quickly.
The responsibility for assessing and developing bills belongs to standing committees that are chaired by members of the majority party, but are made up of members of both parties, as the Congressional Research Service explains.
The important role of political parties in the organization and functioning of the House is described by the House of Representatives Archive. The majority party elects a speaker of the house and chooses other leadership positions, including the chair of all House committees. There are more members of the House than of the Senate, so the majority party wields more power in the lower chamber.
How do the House and Senate chambers differ? In the House of Representatives, the majority party holds significant power to draft chamber rules and schedule bills to reach the floor for debate and voting. In most cases, House rules will limit debate so that important legislation can be passed during one legislative business day. In the Senate however, the majority has the power to schedule when various bills come to the floor for voting but a single Senator can slow legislation from coming to the floor for a vote.
Since debate in the Senate is not concluded until 60 senators vote for a cloture motion to approve a bill for consideration, the majority must also coordinate with the minority part to set the rules for debate on legislation.
Under this system, legislation can be debated for one or two weeks on the Senate floor alone. Why does Congress use the committee system? Congress deals with a broad variety of different policy issues and it is more efficient to have work done at the committee level than on the House or Senate floor. In addition, this system allows members to gain expertise in specific issue areas they are interested in.
Throughout history, committees have been created to address particular issues before Congress. The House has 23 committees while the Senate has a total of 20 committees.
How does a bill become a law? Passing legislation into law is a complicated and lengthy process between the House and Senate before the bill is presented before the President to be signed into law. For a thorough explanation of the legislation process, please see the How a Bill Becomes a Law section on the House website.
Do Members of Congress pay into the social security system?
0コメント