U.S. GOVERNMENT | A resilient balance of institutions
02 January 2008
Congress
The Constitution divides powers among the federal and state governments and the people. It divides the federal government's powers among Congress, the president and the courts.
And, lest Congress still exercise disproportionate power, it divides powers between Congress' two chambers, the Senate and House of Representatives. The two chambers can, and often do, block each other's legislation.
For a bill to become a law, the same, usually a compromise, version of the bill must pass both the House and Senate and then the president must sign it. If the president vetoes a bill, Congress can override the veto but only with two-thirds majorities in both chambers.
Congress is often the butt of jokes for its slow pace and divisive debate. But some thoughtful observers argue that the framers of the Constitution intended those features for good purpose.
"[Congress is] functioning the way the Founding Fathers intended -- not very well," Representative Barber Conable, a well-respected congressman from New York, said in 1984. "They understood that if you move too quickly, our democracy will be less responsible to the majority."
The Great Compromise of the 1787 Constitutional Convention satisfied the demands of the big states for a legislature apportioned by population and those of the small states for a legislature with an equal number of representatives from each state.
In the Senate, each state has two senators elected by popular vote. With 50 states the Senate has 100 senators. California with 37 million people and Wyoming with half a million people each has two senators. Senate terms last six years. A third of the Senate seats are up for election in every even-numbered year.
In the House, each state has a number of representatives proportional to its population, except that even the smallest states have at least one representative. Of the 435 House members, California has 53 and Wyoming has one. House terms last two years. All House seats are up for election every even-numbered year.
The Constitution requires a census be conducted every 10 years counting the population to redistribute the House seats. In states having more than one representative, voters in districts are drawn to have roughly the same number of people elect each House member.
What Congress does mostly is pass legislation -- the laws establishing national policies and directing government spending.
Article 1 of the Constitution gives Congress many exclusive powers: to declare war, to maintain armed forces, to impose taxes and duties, to borrow money and pay debts, to spend money, to regulate the money supply, to regulate interstate commerce and foreign trade, to regulate immigration and naturalization, to establish courts lower than the Supreme Court, to establish post offices and roads, and to protect patents and copyrights.
The Constitution also gives each chamber exclusive powers. All tax bills must originate in the House. The Senate alone approves treaties with and ambassadors to foreign countries. The Senate alone also confirms the president's nominations for Supreme Court justices and lower court judges and top executive branch positions. When no presidential candidate receives a majority of Electoral College votes, the House elects the president, with each state delegation getting one vote.
Congress has the power to remove from office the president, vice president, Supreme Court justices, and other judges, through a procedure called impeachment. The House has the power to impeach, or indict, an official, and the Senate has the power to hold a trial and convict or exonerate him or her.
Implicit in the Constitution is Congress' oversight power to monitor and investigate federal government activities, mostly through hearings in legislative committees. In 2007, a Democratic Congress has been challenging the Republican administration of President Bush over his execution of military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and the fight against terrorists.
In the first Congress' first session in 1789, the second piece of legislation passed was a tariff bill imposing duties of mostly 5 percent to 10 percent on various imports. That Congress also established the State, War and Treasury departments and the office of the attorney general as well as the first federal courts below the Supreme Court. It also passed the first 12 proposed amendments to the Constitution; the states quickly ratified 10 of them, the Bill of Rights.
Since then, the United States and the world have changed, but many of the issues considered by Congress remain much the same: war, the economy, and the rights of the people.
