We The People
An 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.
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 wellorganized local interests’ agents, whereas the
senators serve as agents to both local and
national constituencies.
Sociological versus Agency
Representation
What 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 Senate
A 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 Senate
The 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 Senate
The 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 Senate
The 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 Senate
In 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 Congress
The 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.
The Committee System: The
Core of Congress
Standing 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 Congress
Standing 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 Congress
Standing 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 Congress
Select 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 Congress
Joint 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 Congress
Conference 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 Agencies
Every 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 Agencies
In 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 Law
The 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 threefifths of the senate to end a filibuster.
Debate
This procedure is called cloture, a rule
allowing a majority of two-thirds or threefifths 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 twothirds 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 Powers
The 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 People
An Introduction to American Politics
Essentials Edition
Seventh Edition
Benjamin Ginsberg
Theodore J. Lowi
Margaret Weir
Copyright © 2009 W. W. Norton & Company