There Are 535 Members in the House of Representatives

Learning Outcomes

By the cease of this section, you will exist able to:

• Explain the division of labor in the Firm and in the Senate
• Draw the way congressional committees develop and advance legislation

Non all the business of Congress involves bickering, political infighting, government shutdowns, and Machiavellian maneuvering. Congress does actually get work done. Traditionally, information technology does this work in a very methodical mode. In this section, we will explore how Congress functions at the leadership and committee levels. We will learn how the party leadership controls their conferences and how the many committees within Congress create legislation that can and so exist moved forward or die on the floor.

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Picket this video to learn more than about congressional committees.

PARTY LEADERSHIP

The party leadership in Congress controls the actions of Congress. Leaders are elected by the two-party conferences in each chamber. In the Firm of Representatives, these are the House Democratic Conference and the Firm Republican Conference. These conferences meet regularly and separately not merely to elect their leaders but also to discuss of import issues and strategies for moving policy forward. Based on the number of members in each conference, ane briefing becomes the majority conference and the other becomes the minority conference. Independents similar Senator Bernie Sanders will typically join one or the other major party conference, equally a thing of practicality and often based on ideological affinity. Without the membership to elect their own leadership, independents would have a very difficult fourth dimension getting things washed in Congress unless they had a relationship with the leaders.

Despite the ability of the conferences, however, the virtually important leadership position in the House is really elected past the entire body of representatives. This position is called the Speaker of the House and is the just Firm officer mentioned in the Constitution. The Constitution does not require the Speaker to exist a member of the Business firm, although to date, all fifty-four Speakers accept been. The Speaker is the presiding officer, the administrative head of the Firm, the partisan leader of the majority political party in the Firm, and an elected representative of a single congressional district. As a testament to the importance of the Speaker, since 1947, the holder of this position has been 2nd in line to succeed the president in an emergency, after the vice president.

Figure i. Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (a), the majority leader in the Senate, and Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California (b), the Speaker of the Business firm, are the most powerful congressional leaders in their corresponding chambers.

The Speaker serves until his or her party loses, or until he or she is voted out of the position or chooses to step down. Republican Speaker John Boehner became the latest Speaker to walk away from the position when information technology appeared his position was in jeopardy. This event shows how the party conference (or caucus) oversees the leadership as much as, if not more than, the leadership oversees the party membership in the sleeping room. The Speaker is invested with quite a bit of power, such as the power to assign bills to committees and determine when a bill will exist presented to the floor for a vote. The Speaker also rules on Business firm procedures, oft delegating potency for certain duties to other members. He or she appoints members and chairs to committees, creates select committees to fulfill a specific purpose and and then disband, and tin can even select a fellow member to exist speaker pro tempore, who acts as Speaker in the Speaker'south absenteeism. Finally, when the Senate joins the Firm in a joint session, the Speaker presides over these sessions, because they are usually held in the House of Representatives.

Below the Speaker, the majority and minority conferences each elect two leadership positions arranged in hierarchical gild. At the top of the bureaucracy are the floor leaders of each party. These are generally referred to as the majority and minority leaders. The minority leader has a visible if not always a powerful position. As the official leader of the opposition, he or she technically holds the rank closest to that of the Speaker, makes strategy decisions, and attempts to go along order within the minority. All the same, the majority rules the day in the Business firm, similar a cartel. On the majority side, because information technology holds the speakership, the bulk leader too has considerable ability. Historically, moreover, the majority leader tends to be in the best position to assume the speakership when the current Speaker steps down.

Below these leaders are the ii party'south respective whips. A whip'south task, as the name suggests, is to whip upwardly votes and otherwise enforce party discipline. Whips make the rounds in Congress, telling members the position of the leadership and the collective voting strategy, and sometimes they wave various carrots and sticks in forepart of recalcitrant members to bring them in line. The remainder of the leadership positions in the House include a scattering of chairs and assistantships.

Like the House, the Senate also has majority and minority leaders and whips, each with duties very similar to those of their counterparts in the House. Unlike the House, however, the Senate doesn't have a Speaker. The duties and powers held by the Speaker in the House autumn to the majority leader in the Senate. Some other difference is that, according to the U.S. Constitution, the Senate's president is actually the elected vice president of the United States, but he or she may vote simply in case of a tie. Apart from this and very few other exceptions, the president of the Senate does not actually operate in the Senate. Instead, the Constitution allows for the Senate to choose a president pro tempore —usually the most senior senator of the majority party—who presides over the Senate. Despite the title, the job is largely a formal and powerless role. The real ability in the Senate is in the easily of the bulk leader and the minority leader. Like the Speaker of the House, the majority leader is the chief spokesperson for the majority party, but dissimilar in the Business firm he or she does non run the floor alone. Because of the traditions of unlimited debate and the filibuster, the bulk and minority leaders ofttimes occupy the floor together in an attempt to continue things moving along. At times, their interactions are intense and partisan, but for the Senate to become things done, they must cooperate to go the sixty votes needed to run this super-bulk legislative institution.

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Watch this video to larn more about congressional leadership.

THE Commission SYSTEM

With 535 members in Congress and a seemingly infinite number of domestic, international, economic, agricultural, regulatory, criminal, and military issues to bargain with at whatever given moment, the ii chambers must divide their work based on specialization. Congress does this through the committee arrangement. Specialized committees (or subcommittees) in both the House and the Senate are where bills originate and well-nigh of the work that sets the congressional agenda takes identify. Committees are roughly judge to a bureaucratic department in the executive branch. There are well over two hundred committees, subcommittees, select committees, and joint committees in the Congress. The cadre committees are called standing committees. There are twenty standing committees in the House and 16 in the Senate.

Congressional Standing and Permanent Select Committees
House of Representatives	Senate
Agriculture	Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Appropriations	Appropriations
Armed Services	Military
Budget	Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Educational activity and Labor	Budget
Energy and Commerce	Commerce, Scientific discipline, and Transportation
Ideals	Energy and Natural Resources
Financial Services	Environment and Public Works
Foreign Diplomacy	Ethics (select)
Homeland Security	Finance
House Administration	Strange Relations
Intelligence (select)	Wellness, Education, Labor and Pensions
Judiciary	Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Natural Resources	Indian Affairs
Oversight and Authorities Reform	Intelligence (select)
Rules	Judiciary
Scientific discipline, Infinite, and Engineering science	Rules and Administration
Small Business concern	Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Transportation and Infrastructure	Veterans' Affairs
Veterans' Affairs
Means and Means

Members of both parties compete for positions on various committees. These positions are typically filled past majority and minority members to roughly approximate the ratio of majority to minority members in the respective chambers, although committees are chaired past members of the majority party. Committees and their chairs take a lot of power in the legislative procedure, including the ability to stop a bill from going to the flooring (the total chamber) for a vote. Indeed, most bills die in committee. But when a commission is eager to develop legislation, information technology takes a number of methodical steps. Information technology will reach out to relevant agencies for annotate on resolutions to the problem at hand, such equally by property hearings with experts to collect information. In the Senate, commission hearings are besides held to ostend presidential appointments. Later on the information has been collected, the committee meets to talk over amendments and legislative language. Finally, the committee will transport the bill to the full chamber along with a committee report. The report provides the majority opinion about why the bill should be passed, a minority view to the contrary, and estimates of the proposed law's cost and impact.

Effigy ii. On July 13, 2009, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor began the showtime day of her confirmation hearings before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary. The Senate Judiciary Commission is one of the oldest of the sixteen standing committees in the Senate.

4 types of committees exist in the House and the Senate. The commencement is the continuing, or permanent, committee. This commission is the first phone call for proposed bills, fewer than 10 percent of which are reported out of commission to the floor. The second blazon is the joint committee. Joint committee members are appointed from both the House and the Senate, and are charged with exploring a few key problems, such every bit the economic system and revenue enhancement. However, joint committees have no neb-referral authority whatever—they are informational merely. A conference committee is used to reconcile different bills passed in both the House and the Senate. The conference committees are appointed on an ad hoc footing as necessary when a bill passes the Firm and Senate in different forms. Briefing committees are sometimes skipped in the involvement of expedience, in which one of the chambers relents to the other sleeping room. For example, the House demurred to the Senate over the Affordable Intendance Act instead of going to battle in a conference commission. Still, conference committees are the norm on virtually major pieces of legislation. A contempo example is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, passed in December. Finally, ad hoc, special, or select committees are temporary committees prepare up to address specific topics. These types of committees often conduct special investigations, such every bit on crumbling or ethics.

Committee hearings tin get politically driven public glasses. Consider the Business firm Select Committee on Benghazi, the committee assembled past Republicans to further investigate the 2011 attacks on the U.Southward. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This prolonged investigation became especially partisan equally Republicans trained their guns on then-secretary of country Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency at the fourth dimension. In two multi-hour hearings in which Secretary Clinton was the simply witness, Republicans tended to grandstand in the hopes of gaining political reward or tripping her upward, while Democrats tended to utilise their time to ridicule Republicans.^[1] In the end, the long hearings uncovered little more the elevated state of partisanship in the House, which had scarcely been a secret before.

Figure 3. On October 22, 2015, old Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified for the second time before the Firm Select Committee on Benghazi, answering questions from members for more than than eight hours.

Members of Congress bring to their roles a variety of specific experiences, interests, and levels of expertise, and try to match these to committee positions. For case, House members from states with large agricultural interests volition typically seek positions on the Agriculture Committee. Senate members with a background in banking or finance may seek positions on the Senate Finance Committee. Members can request these positions from their chambers' respective leadership, and the leadership also selects the committee chairs.

Committee chairs are very powerful. They control the commission's budget and choose when the committee will meet, when it will hold hearings, and even whether information technology volition consider a bill. A chair can convene a meeting when members of the minority are absent or adjourn a meeting when things are not progressing as the majority leadership wishes. Chairs can hear a bill even when the rest of the committee objects. They exercise not remain in these powerful positions indefinitely, however. In the House, rules prevent commission chairs from serving more than six consecutive years and from serving as the chair of a subcommittee at the aforementioned fourth dimension. A senator may serve merely 6 years equally chair of a committee simply may, in some instances, besides serve as a chair or ranking member of some other commission.

Figure 4. In 2016, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa (a), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Commission, refused to concur hearings on the nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, despite the urging of his committee colleagues. In the meantime, Garland met with numerous senators, such as Republican Susan Collins of Maine (b). As of Election Day, no hearings had been held, and Garland'south nomination expired on Jan three, 2017. Just ten days subsequently his inauguration, Republican president Donald Trump appear his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the Court. Gorsuch was confirmed in April 2017, despite a delay by the Democrats.

Because the Senate is much smaller than the House, senators agree more than committee assignments than House members. At that place are 16 standing committees in the Senate, and each position must exist filled. In contrast, in the House, with 435 members and only twenty standing committees, committee members take fourth dimension to pursue a more in-depth review of a policy. Firm members historically defer to the decisions of committees, while senators tend to view committee decisions as recommendations, often seeking boosted word that could lead to changes.

LINK TO LEARNING

Take a look at the scores of committees in the Firm and Senate. The tardily House Speaker Tip O'Neill once quipped that if y'all didn't know a new House fellow member's proper noun, you could only call him Mr. Chairperson.

Summary

The leader of the House is the Speaker, who too typically the leader of the majority party. In the Senate, the leader is chosen the bulk leader. The minorities in each chamber also have leaders who help create and act on party strategies. The majority leadership in each sleeping accommodation controls the important committees where legislature is written, amended, and prepared for the floor.

Endeavor Information technology

Retrieve It OVER

• Explain how the committees demonstrate a division of labor in Congress based on specialization.

Glossary

Conference Committee

a special type of joint commission that reconciles unlike bills passed in the House and Senate and so a unmarried neb results

Joint Committee

a legislative committee consisting of members from both chambers that investigates certain topics but lacks bill referral authority

Bulk Leader

the leader of the bulk party in either the Firm or Senate; in the Business firm, the majority leader serves under the Speaker of the House, in the Senate, the bulk leader is the functional leader and master spokesperson for the majority party

Minority Leader

the party member who directs the activities of the minority party on the floor of either the House or the Senate

President Pro Tempore

the senator who acts in the absence of the actual president of the Senate, who is also the vice president of the United states of america; the president pro tempore is usually the most senior senator of the majority political party

Select Committee

a modest legislative committee created to fulfill a specific purpose and then disbanded; also called an advertisement hoc, or special, committee

Speaker of the House

the presiding officer of the House of Representatives and the leader of the bulk political party; the Speaker is 2nd in the presidential line of succession, after the vice president

Standing Committee

a permanent legislative commission that meets regularly

Whip

in the House and in the Senate, a high leadership position whose master duty is to enforce voting discipline in the chambers and conferences

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Source: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/os-government2e/chapter/house-and-senate-organizations/

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