CHAPTER 12
CONGRESS
112th Congress – Ended Jan 3, 2013
th
113
Congress – Current
(ends January 3, 2015)
The House of Representatives
• In the House of Representatives there are 232
Republicans, 199 Democrats, and 4 vacant seats.
– There are 5 delegates representing the District of
Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa,
and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana
Islands. A resident commissioner represents Puerto
Rico. They possess the same powers as other
members of the House, except that they may not vote
when the House is meeting as the House of
Representatives.
– Representatives represent about 710,000 people each
and serve 2 year terms.
• The annual salary of each Representative is
$174,000. The Speaker of the House earns more:
$223,500
• $193,400 for their party leaders (the same as
Senate leaders).
• A cost-of-living-adjustment (COLA) increase takes
effect annually unless Congress votes to not
accept it.
• Congress sets members' salaries; however, the
27th Amendment to the United States
Constitution prohibits a change in salary (but not
COLA) from taking effect until after the next
election of the whole House. Representatives are
eligible for retirement benefits after serving for
five years. Outside pay is limited to 15% of
congressional pay.
The Senate
• The Senate has 53 Democrats, 45 Republicans,
and 2 Independents, who caucus with the
Democrats
– A senator represents between 1 and 37 million
people, depending on their state’s population.
Senators serve staggered 6 year terms.
AGE
• The average age of Members of the House at
the beginning of the 112th Congress was 56.7
years; and of Senators, 62.2 years.
• U.S. = 36.8 years
EDUCATION
• The vast majority of Members (92% of House
Members and 99% of Senators) at the
beginning of the 112th Congress held
bachelor’s degrees.
• 26 Members of the House and 1 Senator have
no degree beyond a high school diploma.
• Law degrees are held by 167 Members of the
House (38%) and 55 Senators (55%).
BACKGROUND/EMPLOYMENT
• Law is the dominantly declared profession of
Senators, followed by public service/politics,
then business;
• For Representatives, business is first, followed
by public service/politics, then law.
RELIGION
• 57% of the Members (248 in the House, 56 in the
Senate) are Protestants. U.S. = 51.3%
• 29% percent of the Members (132 in the House, 24 in
the Senate) are Catholic. U.S. = 23.9%
• 7% of the Members (27 in the House, 12 in the Senate)
are Jewish. U.S. = 1.7%
• Other religious affiliations represented in the 112th
Congress include Greek Orthodox, Quaker, Unitarian
Universalist, and The Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints (Mormon). There are also three Buddhists
and two Muslims, all serving in the House.
GENDER
• 91 women (16.8% of the total membership)
serve in the 112th Congress. 74, including 3
Delegates, serve in the House and 17 in the
Senate.
• U.S. = 50.7%
• 113th: 98 women; 78 House, 20 Senate.
RACE: AFRICAN-AMERICAN/BLACK
• There are 44 African American Members
(8.1% of the total membership, and a record
number) in the 112th Congress; all 44 serve in
the House, including two Delegates.
• U.S. = 12.6%
• 113th: 43 African Americans
• In 2013 Senator Tim Scott of
South Carolina took the
senatorial oath, the first
African American senator since
Reconstruction to represent a
southern state.
• When the governor of
Massachusetts appointed
William "Mo" Cowan on
February 1, 2013, to fill a
Senate vacancy, this marked
the first time in history that
two African American
senators served
simultaneously.
• Senator Cowan served just a
short appointed term, but in
October of 2013 Senator Cory
Booker of New Jersey won a
Senate seat in a special
election and joined Senator
Scott in the 113th Congress.
TIM SCOTT, SC (R)
CORY BOOKER, NJ (D)
RACE: LATINO/HISPANIC
• There are 31 Hispanic or Latino Members in
the 112th Congress, 5.7% of the total
membership. (Same for 113th).
• 29 serve in the House and 2 in the Senate.
• U.S. = 16.3%
[12 Asian American/Pacific Islander]
VETERANS
• 118 Members
(21.8% of the total membership)
• U.S. = 7.2%
SUMMARY …
CONGRESS IS …
WHILE THE U.S. IS …
REPRESENTATION
Does Congress/our
representatives need to be
DESCRIPTIVE in order to be
SUBSTANTIVE?
The House of Representatives
• a. The House is more institutionalized than the Senate
meaning it is more hierarchical
• b. Party loyalty to leadership and party-line voting are
more common in the House (since there are more
members – leaders do more leading)
• c. House Rules Committee: unique committee in the
House that reviews most bills coming from a House
committee before they go to the full House
– 1. Each bill is given a “rule” which schedules the bill on the
calendar, allots time for debate, and sometimes even
specifies what kind of amendments may be offered
(speaker appoints members)
• d. House can impeach officials and all revenue bills
must start there
The Senate
• a. Since the Senate is smaller it is less disciplined
and less centralized
• b. Committees and the party leadership are
important in determining the Senate legislative
agenda
• 1. the party leaders do for scheduling what the
Rules Committee does in the House
• c. Filibuster: a strategy unique to the Senate
whereby opponents of a piece of legislation try to
talk it to death, based on the tradition of
unlimited debate
• 1. Cloture: today 60 members can vote to stop a
filibuster
The Committees and Subcommittees
1. Most of the real work of Congress goes on in
committees
• a. Committees dominate policy-making
• b. Committees regularly hold hearings to
investigate problems and possible wrongdoing and to oversee the executive branch
• c. They control the congressional agenda and
guide legislation from its introduction to its
send-off for the president’s signature
2. Committees can be grouped into four types
• a. Standing committees: separate permanent
subject-matter committees in each house of
Congress that handle bills in different policy areas
• Subcommittees: smaller units of a committee
created out of the committee membership
• In the 107th Congress the typical member of the
House served on two standing committees and
four subcommittees
• In the Senate the typical member served on three
committees and seven subcommittees
b. Joint committees: Congressional committee
on a few subject-matter areas with
membership drawn from both houses
c. Conference committees: congressional
committees formed to work out differences
when the Senate and the House pass a
particular bill in different forms
• 1. party leadership appoints members from
each house
• 2. the result must be a single bill
d. Select committees: congressional
committees appointed for a specific purpose
• 1. an example would be the committee to
deal with the Watergate investigation
Legislative oversight: Congress’s monitoring of the bureaucracy and
its administration of policy, performed mainly through hearings
• 1. This is one of the checks that the legislative branch has over the
executive branch
• 2. Members of a committee constantly monitor a has a law that
they passed is being implemented – this allows Congress to exert
pressure on executive agencies, or even to cut their budgets in
order to secure compliance with congressional wishes
• 3. Congressional oversight sometimes captures the public’s
attention, such as the 1973 Watergate scandal and the 1987 IranContra Affair
• 4. Congress keeps tabs on more routine activities of the executive
branch through its committee staff members, who have specialized
expertise in fields and agencies that their committees oversee and
maintain an extensive network of formal and informal contacts with
the bureaucracy
INCUMBENTS
• Current officeholders
Put another way …
• A recent Gallup poll found that 11% of people
found polygamy "morally acceptable."
• Additionally, 30% of Americans expressed
approval of pornography.
Why?
• 1. Advertising
– Service to constituents
– Franking Privilege
• 2. Credit Claiming
– Service to constituents
• Casework: individual service
• Pork Barrel: $ for public projects
• 3. Position Taking
– Stances on issues
– Public Image
• 4. Weak Opponents
– Not well-known/qualified
– Lack experience
– Lack organization
– Lack $
• Herbert Alexander refers to "the doctrine of sufficiency"
to describe the idea that it is more important to have
"enough" money than to have "more" money —
enough to compete effectively but not necessarily
more money than the opponent.
• Winners having more $ may be more correlative than
causative.
• 5. Gerrymandering
– a practice that attempts to establish a political
advantage for a particular party or group by
manipulating geographic boundaries to create
partisan or incumbent-protected districts
• The word was created in reaction to a
redrawing of Massachusetts state senate
election districts under the then-governor
Elbridge Gerry.
• In 1812, Governor Gerry signed a bill that
redistricted Massachusetts to benefit his
Democratic-Republican Party. When mapped,
one of the contorted districts in the Boston
area was said to resemble the shape of a
salamander.
Baker v. Carr (1962)
• redistricting (attempts to change the way
voting districts are delineated) issues present
justiciable questions, thus enabling federal
courts to intervene in and to decide
redistricting cases. The defendants
unsuccessfully argued that redistricting of
legislative districts is a "political question",
and hence not a question that may be
resolved by federal courts
• The Court formulated the famous "one person,
one vote" standard for legislative redistricting,
holding that each individual had to be weighted
equally in legislative apportionment.
• Equalizing the population of districts and
attempting to create compact, contiguous
districts.
• Trying to keep political units and communities
within a single district, and avoiding the drawing
of boundaries for purposes of partisan advantage
or incumbent protection
Prison-based Gerrymandering
• Occurs in places like New York when prisoners are
counted as residents of a particular district,
increasing the district's population with nonvoters when assigning political apportionment.
• Although many prisoners come from (and return
to) urban communities, they are counted as
"residents" of the rural districts that contain large
prisons, thereby artificially inflating the political
representation in districts with prisons at the
expense of voters in all other districts without
prisons.