First, you have the Senate with 100 members. They're designed to represent the states equally. So you get two senators from each state. Since there's 50 states, there's my sick math skills. And since the 17th Amendment, senators have been directly elected by the people.
Prior to that, it was the state legislator. And in the Senate, they serve six-year terms. The other branch is the House of Reps. This, you have currently 435 members.
They serve a two-year term, and they're designed to represent the population. So... from the start, they were directly elected by the people.
And the more people in a state like California or New York or Texas, the more reps you get in the House of Reps. So what are the constitutional requirements in the Constitution? There are specific things about who can run for office, and they're slightly different according to office. In the Senate, you have to be age 30 and older, and you have to have been a citizen of the United States for nine years.
In the House of Reps, you only have to be 25 and older, and you only have to have been a citizen for seven years. In both houses, you must live in the state in which you are representing. And historically, both women and minorities are underrepresented in Congress.
You can see in those graphics right there the representation of different groups in the 115th Congress. Congress tends to be dominated by wealthy white males. Now, this is slowly changing.
We had our first female Speaker of the House in 2007, but we got a long way to go in terms of representation. So let's look at congressional elections. Congressional elections tend to be won by incumbents.
And the incumbent is someone who currently holds office and is running for re-election. And most congressional elections tend not to be very competitive. Roughly 90% of House incumbents win re-elections.
Elections for the Senate tend to be a bit more competitive. There's much more media attention and prestige on Senate seats, and thus they tend to be a bit more competitive. But once again, incumbents tend to win.
Now you can see in that political cartoon right there, there's some irony here. There's a tendency for voters to disapprove of Congress, but unusual for incumbents to lose re-election. So why can that be?
And one thing to keep in mind, it's not that voters agree with the voting record of their representatives or the positions they take. Most voters don't even really know the policy votes. There are, though, some advantages of incumbency, and here are some of them. Advertising invisibility. Incumbents have that name recognition.
They can contact constituents. The voters get mail from them. They have something called franking privilege, so they can send out mail without paying for postage to their constituents. And basically this results in free advertising. They can also do something called credit claiming.
For example, a congressional representative can do casework, which is service to individual constituents. So if a voter needs help accessing government benefits like unemployment or food stamps or things like that. And this help to constituents oftentimes results in votes at the ballot box. You also get pork barrel projects, which is federal money for projects within the district or state.
And if a politician is bringing in money to their district or their state, that's going to make voters more likely to vote for them. Position taking is taking a strong position on an issue. And usually candidates do this when they know how the majority of potential voters feel about an issue.
And so since incumbents have that media visibility. If they take positions that are popular, that can translate into an electoral victory. And there's a tendency to have weak opponents. It's not just that they don't have the name recognition.
They don't have the experience very often, the resources, and of course, the money. And that leads us to campaign spending. Incumbents tend to have the support of their political parties and as a result, have a lot more money behind their re-election campaigns.
Another thing to keep in mind is congressional districts are typically controlled by one political party, and this gives incumbents another advantage. State legislatures redraw districts every 10 years based upon the census. And you can see in the map over there, in 2010, as a result of the 2010 census, some states lost seats in the House, others gained seats in the House. The reason why this is important is district demographics are often redrawn to ensure safe congressional seats for the party in control.
In other words, these districts are drawn on purpose for one party to dominate. The term for this is called gerrymandering, and it is the process of manipulating district boundaries to help ensure a political advantage for one party. over another. Politicians are basically choosing their voters versus the voters choosing their politicians.
You can see right there how this leads to some oddly shaped congressional districts and many people see gerrymandering as a major problem to our democratic process. How do incumbents lose? How do we say bye Felicia to them? Well, a bad economy or a personal or political scandal is never good and can lead to...
an incumbent losing a re-election bid, changes in the midterms from shifting public mood. And what this means is the party that occupies the presidency tends to lose seats in the midterm election. So if the president is Republican, Democrats tend to pick up seats when it comes to the midterm elections.
As mentioned previously, redistricting every 10 years, congressional districts are redrawn to deal with population changes reflected in the census. And this could lead to an incumbent losing re-election if their district changes. or disappears or is folded into another. An open seat is when an incumbent is not running for re-election. They retire.
They decide not to run. And most turnover in Congress occurs because of the presence of an open seat. There is debate about this.
Is the stability of incumbents winning re-election good for government? On the thumbs up side, you have this idea that these incumbents bring experience and expertise, which creates a certain stability in government. And on the other side...
Many argue that this creates career politicians whose only goal is to stay in office and they don't really have the threat of losing re-election, so they don't really take any risk or do much when it comes to their congressional careers. Next up is how Congress is organized to make policy. Remember the framers set up a bicameral legislator. Bicameral meaning two houses. As mentioned previously, you have the House of Representatives, which is based on population.
The Senate, two reps per state. And shout out to the Connecticut Compromise. brokered by Roger Sherman from Connecticut, or known as the Great Compromise, for setting the system up. A bill has to pass both the Senate and the House to become a law.
This is all about the checks and balances the framers set up. And a very important idea is the enumerated, those that are spelled out, and the implied powers in the Constitution allow the creation of public policy by Congress. And some of these powers include passing a federal budget, raising revenue through taxes and other means, and and coining money. These are some of the powers explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.
Other powers include the power to declare war and passing laws that deal with a wide variety of issues. Congress has broad power as a result of the Necessary and Proper Clause, and Congress has the ability to pass laws on a variety of things, social, economic, environmental. You could see in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
Both the House and the Senate do have some unique powers in the House of Representatives. There are a few things that only they can do. For example, revenue bills start in the House.
So any bill that raises taxes must start in the House. And the House of Representatives has the power to impeach the president or other federal officials. Make sure you know about the Rules Committee in the House of Reps. They schedule when a bill will be voted on and the amount of debate time which will be allowed. And since they control the timing of the bills, they have enormous power. The Senate also has some unique powers that you should know about.
And amongst them are the confirmation of many presidential nominations. Cabinet secretaries are approved by the Senate with a majority vote, federal judges, and so on. Ratification of treaties require two-thirds vote of the Senate. And impeachment trials take place in the Senate.
Something that is also unique to the Senate is the power of a filibuster. A filibuster is when an opponent of a bill takes the floor in a debate and keeps talking in order to delay or to prevent a vote. And this can last for days.
days and is intended to get the advocates of a bill to give up. And it's basically the right to unlimited debate. And it is oftentimes used by the minority party.
So they know they can't defeat the bill by voting. But if you do a filibuster, you could talk it to death. There is a way to end a filibuster.
And this is something called cloture. If 60 senators vote to halt the debate, a filibuster can be ended and a vote will be held. But keep in mind, it is very Hard to get a two-thirds vote in the Senate, so it's very rare that cloture takes place. On to congressional leadership.
There are different leadership positions in the two houses of Congress, and congressional leadership positions are chosen by the political parties who are in charge. And you can see some of those positions right there. Chamber rules impact the policymaking process, so there are different rules for the House and the Senate.
Both the Senate and the House have a majority leader. The job of the majority leader is to... persuade members of their own party to vote according to the party line. So they work with the party whips to make sure that everyone supports the legislative agenda.
The whips are those individuals who communicate between party officials and make sure they have the votes prior to a bill officially being voted on. Make sure the votes add up so that they can get a legislative win. The minority leader in both houses is the leader of the minority party. So if Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Democrats would have a minority leader.
And committee chairs are those individuals who head up the different committees. More on committees in just a moment. There are some positions that are unique to each house. The House of Rep has the Speaker of the House, and that individual is chosen by the majority party.
So you can see when the Democrats controlled Congress early on in Obama's presidency, you had Pelosi, the first female speaker. And then when they lost control of the House, the Republicans had their own speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. The speaker is a very powerful position.
It is the main leadership role in the House. They make committee assignments, assign bills to committee. And after the vice president, they are the next in line for the presidency, which leads us to the Senate and the vice president.
The vice president serves as the head of the Senate. But in terms of the day-to-day operation of the Senate, the vice president only comes to vote in the event of a tie. Keep in mind is members of Congress are free to break from their party when voting. They can't be forced to vote with the party.
And although political parties have influence in Congress, you do see representatives occasionally voting against policy proposals of the party leadership. Now, in both houses, you have. But committees and subcommittees and committees in each House of Congress determine the congressional agenda, help create legislation, conduct hearings, and debate bills. And it's much easier to accomplish these goals in a smaller group than in the main chamber of Congress.
So all bills, once they are introduced, the first thing they do is they head to committee. And there are four types of committees. Standing committees, you can see some of the ones that currently exist in the House and Senate over there on the right.
They deal with bills and... different legislative areas. So you have things like Veterans Affairs, Energy, and they deal with the day-to-day legislative business.
Congressional leaders are typically on a few different standing committees. The second type of committee is a joint committee, and this is when members from both the House and the Senate serve. And so this is really reserved for big policy areas like tax policy.
The third one is conference committees. They are created to reconcile competing versions of the same bill passed by the House and the Senate. So if there's two different versions of a bill with differences, they will be sent to one of these committees so they can hammer out the differences. And then finally, select committees are created to deal with specific policy issues.
So for example, trying to deal with the deficit and reducing the deficit may end up in a select committee. Make sure you know about discharge petitions in the House. This is a way to force a bill out of committee and to the House floor for a vote. This requires signatures of a majority of the House of Representatives, which is difficult to get, but this is a power.
If a bill is stuck in committee, they do have the power of a discharge petition in the House of Representatives. Getting on a committee is important for congressional leaders, especially for members newly elected to Congress. And remember, it is the majority leader of both houses and the committee chairs that ultimately appoint and decide who serves on which committee. The reason why it is important is it is an opportunity to create policy for their constituents or in areas they are passionate about.
So if you're in a farming area, you want to get in the Agricultural Commission. If you're from a district with a high percentage of veterans, you may want to get on the VA, the Veterans Affairs Committee. Another reason why committees are important for congressional leaders is it helps gain influence in Congress.
All bills are going to end up in a committee, and this is a way to make a name for yourself, which ultimately will help with re-election. If you're the person who helped pass some significant legislation about veterans' benefits, you can claim credit back to that credit claiming, which voters will typically reward you at the ballot box. Next to the Speaker of the House and the majority leaders, the committee chairs are very influential.
They influence the committee's agendas, schedule hearings, and many other things. And these committee chairs serve a gatekeeping role. They're really kind of controlling the legislative process, fast-tracking bills prior to an election, and so on. And in terms of committee setup, the seniority system is still largely influential when selecting committee assignments and leadership positions. So the longer you've been there, the more likely you're going to get those really in-demand committee assignments.
Next up is how Congress is organized to make policy. So far, we've been talking about the formal structure of Congress. That's the committees and leadership positions, Speaker of the House, Majority Leader, Minority Leader.
There also is an informal organization of Congress. And this is through the caucuses. Congressional caucuses are basically congressional interest groups consisting of members of similar ideology, demographics, geography, or interests. So you have, for example, the Congressional Black Caucus made up of African-American congressional leaders. You also have the House and Freedom Caucus, which tends to be the more conservative.
libertarian strand of the Republican Party. So it could be based upon demographics, ideology, or a whole number of things. Members work toward advancing policies they support or towards opposing laws they think are bad.
And caucuses are a powerful way to try to shape policy because you can coordinate your effort. And today there's about 500 caucuses that exist. Another part of the organization of Congress is there is a large network of congressional staff and interns.
that support the work of Congress. At any one time, there's approximately 11,000 staffers, thousands of interns working in both D.C. and back in the congressional district in the home state. And they work with constituents, draft legislation, meet with lobbyists, summarize bills, prep legislators for committees, and a whole bunch of things kind of really helping Congress and its organization as they attempt to make policy. And one of the most basic things you should know is only a member of Congress can introduce a bill.
They can propose a law. Anybody else can help write it, draft it, staffers, lobbyists. But they are the ones who introduce a bill. And once they introduce it, it goes to a committee first.
Once in committee, it must get a majority approval from the committee members before it goes before the full House and Senate for debate and ultimately a vote. So that reveals the enormous power of the committee chair to help. decide the fate of a bill.
The president can try to persuade Congress to take up their legislative agenda. More on the presidency in the next video, but they can propose bills. They can lobby congressional leaders.
The president and his or her staff could put pressure or negotiate with congressional leaders to try to get their own legislative agenda being taken up by Congress. But Congress does remain independent as the framers want it. So they can choose to ignore the president.
and they often will, especially if the president is from a different political party. Some examples of this is a refusal to confirm appointments of lame duck presidents of the opposite party. And in the era of divided government where Congress is controlled by one party and the presidency is controlled by another, you will often see partisan votes against presidential appointments or proposals. Regardless of the relationship between Congress and the presidency, Ultimately, it is a congressional leader's constituents that hold legislators accountable. And the way they can do this is at the ballot box.
In terms of the congressional process, we've already mentioned the polarization of politics means many votes are split firmly along party lines. Make sure you know the different views of the role of representatives. One is the trustee model of representations. This is the idea that legislators should use their best judgment as to what is in the best interest for the people. The instructed delegates model of representation argues that legislators should match the policy choices of the citizens in their district.
And the final view is the politico model, which is a hybrid of these two models. And this is really trying to balance the two ideas mentioned above. So trying to do what's in the long term best interest while also taking into account the concerns of constituents.
As we learned in the previous video, there are thousands of lobbyists and countless interest groups trying to influence the political process. A couple of last minute things to help in your understanding of Congress. Due to its large size, direct democracy is impractical in the United States.
We're a very big nation with people spread across all 50 states. And so therefore, we have a representative democracy. As such, voters do not have influence on the day-to-day running of Congress. As we've seen, who gets leadership positions, committee membership, and so on. That is decided by the party leadership.
They control these things. Our control as citizens is at the ballot box and putting pressure on them to do and serve the needs of our communities. Some challenges, Congress is unrepresentative.
Congress members are largely from the elite and there is a racial, gender, socioeconomic groups that are underrepresented in Congress. These problems are exasperated by things such as gerrymandering and campaign finance, spending and other factors. And another concern is members of Congress may look out for the needs of their constituents versus those of the national interest.
This can lead and does lead to things like pork barrel spending and increasing government spending and the size and scope of the government as congressional leaders are trying to get money pumped into their districts and states. And sometimes these projects are of questionable merit or contrary to the interest of the nation as a whole. With pork barrel spending, oftentimes comes the log rolling effect where congressional leaders will exchange favors. You vote for my bill.
I'll vote for your bill. Supporting one another to help bring home the bacon to their home state or district. And as always, the continued debate about the size and scope of the government plays a large role in the debates in both the House and the Senate. And if you haven't done so, subscribe, tell like 20 people you know, click like and have a beautiful day. Peace.