4 Congress Flashcards
bicameral congress
- 2 chambers with a presidential system that’s separate from the legislative and executive
- chambers are almost identical in power, both functioning the same (like the legislative process and oversight standpoints)
House of Representatives
- re-elected every 2 years
- 435 seats (218 is the threshold for a majority)
Senate
- re-elected every 6 years (1/3=33 senators are re-elected every 2 years but each serve 6 years)
- 2 senators/state = 100 senators (51 is the majority threshold)
majority of the House/Senate
- determines how the House is ran (since there aren’t many rules for operation)
- allows the party to decide the Speaker
independents
- announce which party to be counted with
- mostly applies to the Senate
bill
proposed legislation
legislative process
- a bill is introduced in either chamber (just not by the president)
- the bill is read and sent to one or more (specialized) (sub)committee(s), which changes it
- committee decides to endorse or not, then reintroduces it to the chamber
- the bill is put to a vote, and is moved to the other chamber, where the preceding processes apply
- since the other chamber revises the bill, it must be changed thru a reconciliation committee (comprised of members from both chambers)
- the final bill is sent to both chambers, and if it passes, it’s sent to the president
- the president has veto to pass or kill the bill
- the bill becomes law if approved
filibuster
senators can apply this on a bill, meaning it cannot pass unless 60 senators vote to override it
why did partisan politics intensify?
Newt Gingrich (former Republican Speaker of the House in 1994) + Fox News (1996) = 1996 increase of political polarization
Newt Gingrich
- he argued that Democrats stayed in power since Republicans were working with them
- this made it look like Congress didn’t need to be changed, so breaking Congress would allow change of power
- argued for Republican candidates that didn’t want to work with Democrats (partisan)
primaries
pre-election elections, wherein a riding nominee is voted in by their party
gerrymandering
- manipulating the boundaries of a constituency to maximize the number of seats a party can win
- whoever’s in charge of a state draws the map to maximize the number of winnable seats
- when you run for a gerrymandered seat, you only need to worry about primaries
Fox News
- media coverage traditionally tried to be bipartisan
- by being totally Republican, Fox News revolutionized news coverage
- plays a role in votes, so this drives Republicans to be more right-wing
MSNBC
purely left-wing channel made by the Democrats in response to Fox News
the fundamental problem in the 1970s
- the American Dream stopped being attractive to most ppl
- the Dream is about social mobility but it starts to halt since real wages haven’t risen outside of the top 10%
- there’s a huge amount of dissatisfaction stemming from social barriers
whips
essentially leaders-in-training
current composition of the House
- Republican majority leader and whip
- Democratic minority leader and whip
current composition of the Senate
- Democratic majority leader and whip
- Republican minority leader and whip
de facto head of the Senate
the Senate majority leader decides the agenda and on what issues to vote
recognized heads of the Senate
- the Vice President
- the Speaker of the Senate
the most powerful figure in the House
- the Speaker, who is almost always from the majority party
- voted in by everyone, whereas leaders and whips are voted in by their parties
- sets the agenda
