• Lobbying
• Washington, District of Columbia
• Enacting legislation
• Standing Committees in the House and Senate, 108th Congress (2003–5)
• Iron Triangles
• Committee work
• The national budget
• Casework
• Gerrymandering
• Campaigning
• Miscellaneous offices
• For More Information

Congress is the legislative branch of the government of the United States of America. The legislature is the branch that makes the laws. Congress has two chambers, the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House has 435 representatives, one from each of 435 districts in the United States. The Senate has one hundred senators, two from each of America's fifty states.

Making laws is one of the things that representatives and senators do daily, but it is not the only thing. Members of Congress meet with lobbyists, people working for businesses or interest groups that want Congress to pass certain laws. They also work on the national budget, America's plan for raising money through taxes and spending it on governmental programs. Members of Congress do casework, helping voters from their districts or states with governmental problems. They also spend time campaigning for reelection. Finally, Congress operates miscellaneous offices, such as the Library of Congress, that perform services for the government.

Lobbying

Before Congress can propose a law, the idea for the law needs to come from somewhere. Sometimes the legislators in Congress propose the idea, and other times the president of the United States does. The legislators and the president often get their ideas from business leaders, lobbyists, and private interest groups.

Lobbyists are people who work for private interests to get favorable legislation passed in Congress. Private interests can be single entities, such as a defense contractor, or an organization that represents many people or groups, such as People For the American Way, a group that advocates a diverse democratic society. The word "lobbyist" comes from the fact that they spend a great deal of time in the halls and lobbies of Congress, meeting with members and congressional staffers. According to Walter E. Volkomer in American Government, the term was first used in Great Britain to describe journalists waiting to meet with legislators in the lobbies of the House of Commons, a chamber of the British legislature.

Many of the lobbyists in Washington, D.C., represent business interests. According to Michael Parenti in Democracy for the Few, President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; served 1913–21) once said:

Suppose you go to Washington and try to get at your Government. You will always find that while you are politely listened to, the men really consulted are the men who have the big stake—the big bankers, the big manufacturers, and the big masters of commerce. . . . The masters of the Government of the United States are the combined capitalists and manufacturers of the United States.

Lobbyists help members of Congress analyze how their votes on particular bills will affect their chances to be reelected. They also analyze the chances that different bills, or proposed laws, have of passing Congress. Lobbyists supply members of Congress with information concerning the subject matter of congressional bills. When congressional committees hold hearings, lobbyists testify, or speak, before the committees in an effort to influence the passing of a law their clients want.

According to Parenti, "Lobbyists make themselves so helpful that members of Congress sometimes rely on them to perform tasks normally done by congressional staffs. Lobbyists will draft legislation, write speeches, and plant stories in the press on behalf of cooperative lawmakers."

Lobbyists also help members of Congress through campaign contributions from the interest groups the lobbyists represent. Businesspeople regularly donate money to individual legislators and political parties who work for favorable legislation. Because it is illegal for corporations to donate money directly to a congressional campaign, businesses create political action committees, called PACs. Corporations use the PACs to raise money from corporate executives and other contributors for donation to members of Congress. Labor unions, which represent workers, use PACs to raise money for politicians, too.

There are many nonbusiness interest groups that hire lobbyists. Environmental, religious, and other organizations hire lobbyists to represent their general interests. Many single-issue organizations hire lobbyists, too, such as groups that support or oppose abortion and reproductive rights.

According to Jack Anderson in "Lobbyists: The Unelected Lawmakers in Washington," Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill (1912–1994) once said, "The grab of special interests is staggering. It will destroy the legislative process." Many Americans, like O'Neill, believe PACs allow financial contributors to have too much control over congressional policy. Others believe PACs allow people and businesses to avoid campaign finance restrictions by using complicated financial maneuvers. For example, in early 2005, U.S. representative Tom DeLay of Texas faced charges that he ran corporate contributions through the Republican Party's national organization and then back to individual races for the state House of Representatives in Texas. Under Texas law, it was illegal for corporate contributions to help state legislative candidates.

Supporters of PACs say the First Amendment freedom of speech protects the right to influence government by supporting politicians and political causes with financial contributions.

Enacting legislation

On September 29, 1789, President George Washington (1732–1799; served 1789–97) signed the first appropriations law for the United States of America. An appropriations law gives money to a particular government program. The law President Washington signed that September was only a few lines long. It provided $568,000 for government salaries, the Department of War, the Department of the Treasury, and pensions.

The lawmaking process has grown more complicated and specialized since then. It begins when a representative or senator introduces a bill in either the House or the Senate. From there, the bill is assigned to a House or Senate committee for consideration. If the committee sends the bill back to the House or Senate, the representatives or senators debate, or discuss, the bill and then vote on it.

If a bill passes both the House and the Senate by simple majorities, it goes to the president of the United States for consideration. If the president signs it, the bill becomes law. If the president vetoes, or rejects, the bill, it does not become law unless two-thirds of both chambers of Congress vote to override the president's veto.

Introduction of a bill

A bill is a draft of a proposed law. Any senator or representative can introduce a bill into his or her chamber of Congress. Senators introduce bills in the Senate by sending them to the Senate desk on the Senate floor. Representatives introduce bills by putting them in a hopper, a mahogany box, on the House floor.

The president of the United States cannot introduce bills into Congress. The president, however, is the source of many bills introduced by senators and representatives. Every year in January, the president delivers a State of the Union address to Congress. The president is required to give the address under Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution. Part of the address describes what laws the president would like Congress to enact in the upcoming year. People who work for the president in the executive branch draft many bills for these proposed laws, and members of Congress who favor the president's proposals introduce the bills into the House or Senate.

Each year, of the thousands of bills introduced in the House and the Senate, only hundreds make it through the legislative process to become laws.

Committee consideration

President Woodrow Wilson once said, "Congress in session is Congress on exhibition, whilst Congress in its committee-rooms is Congress at work," according to the authors of The Challenge of Democracy. The most important committees in both chambers of Congress are called standing committees, or permanent committees. Standing committees cover the major areas of government. Examples include the Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Judiciary Committees in the Senate, and the Agriculture, Science, and Small Business Committees in the House. As of 2005, the Senate had sixteen standing committees, and the House had nineteen. Most standing committees have subcommittees that handle specific portions of the committee's area of concern.

Committees are like miniature chambers of Congress. Each senator and representative gets to serve on a small number of committees and subcommittees. The majority party, the political party with the most members in the House or Senate, gets to have the most members on each committee and subcommittee. The chair, or head, of each committee is always from the majority party. The minority party, the party with the second most members in each chamber, is allotted fewer members on each committee than the majority party. This way, the majority party controls each committee just as it controls the entire House or Senate.

After a bill is introduced into Congress, the next step is for it to be sent to a committee for consideration. The majority party in each chamber gets to decide which committees get which bills. Sometimes a bill is sent to more than one committee.

When a bill reaches a committee, the committee first decides whether it wants to consider it. The vast majority of bills get tabled, or set aside, dying without consideration. The rest of the bills are studied, usually by a subcommittee.

When a subcommittee gets a bill, it uses its staff to study and research the bill to decide whether Congress should enact it. If the bill is particularly important, the subcommittee might hold hearings on it. Hearings allow the subcommittee to collect testimony on whether and why Congress should enact the bill, what the bill should accomplish, and how the bill should be written. Hearings feature testimony by experts, officials from federal agencies, lobbyists, and other people interested in the legislation. The subcommittee can rewrite the bill and decide whether to report it, or send it, to the main committee for a vote.

When the main committee gets a bill back, it can conduct research and hold hearings just like the subcommittee did. Committee hearings used to be closed to the public, but are now usually open since the House changed its rules in the 1990s. A committee considers a bill line-by-line and creates a report on why the bill is important. Committee members opposed to the bill can include their concerns in the report. Then the committee votes on the bill. If the vote is against the bill, it dies in the committee. If the vote is in favor of the bill, it goes back to the House or Senate.

Calendar

If a Senate committee votes in favor of a bill, the bill goes to the full Senate, where it is placed on a calendar. The Senate consider smost bills in the order in which they appear on the calendar. The leaders of the parties in the Senate, called the majority leader and minority leader, work together to arrange a time for debating the bill. They also set limitations on what kinds of amendments, or changes, senators can offer for the bill on the Senate floor. Their agreement on debate and amendments is called unanimous consent, because the entire Senate must approve it.

If a House committee votes in favor of a bill, the bill goes to the full House, where it is placed on one of various House calendars. If the bill is an appropriations bill, the House Appropriations Committee works with the Speaker of the House and the House majority leader to set the time for debate. If the bill is not an appropriations bill, the House Rules Committee gets to set the time for debate and to decide what kinds of amendments representatives can offer on the floor. The House has complicated rules for determining the order in which it considers bills from its various calendars.

Floor procedure

Debate is a chance for members of Congress to show their supporters, both voters and private interest groups, how hard they are working for them. When it is time to debate a bill, the House follows the arrangement worked out by the House Rules Committee. The House has strict rules governing who may speak on a bill and for how much time.

Debate in the Senate is not restricted as much as in the House. In fact, a senator can normally speak for as long as desired about a particular bill. This occasionally results in a filibuster, which happens when one or more senators speak for a long time so that the time for considering a bill runs out before a vote is taken. A successful filibuster kills a bill before the full Senate gets to vote on it. The longest filibuster on record was by U.S. senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who spoke against civil rights legislation for 24 hours, 18 minutes, on August 28–29, 1957.

Beginning in 1917, the Senate adopted a cloture rule, which is a way to end a filibuster. (The word comes from the alteration of a French word meaning "closure.") Under the cloture rule as of 2005, three-fifths of the Senate, or sixty senators, can bring a filibuster to an end by voting for cloture.

When debate has ended in either the House or the Senate, the senators and representatives who are present vote on the bill under consideration. To pass one chamber, the bill must receive a simple majority of votes. This means that in the House, at least 218 of the 435 representatives must vote in favor of a bill to pass it. In the Senate, fifty-one senators (or fifty senators and the vice president of the United States) must vote in favor of a bill to pass it. When the Senate is split 50-50, the vice president of the United States gets to cast the tie-breaking vote as president of the Senate under Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution.

If only one chamber of Congress passes a bill, it dies there. If both chambers pass identical versions of the same bill, it goes to the president of the United States for consideration. If the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, the two bills go to a congressional conference committee.

Conference committees

When the House and Senate have different versions of the same bill, they usually work out the differences informally. Often the chairs, or heads, of the committees that wrote the bills meet to agree on a single, identical version.

If the bill is very important or controversial, meaning there is a lot of disagreement, the two chambers may pass their own versions and then send them to a conference committee. About 20 percent of all bills that pass Congress go through conference committees.

Conference committees have members from both the House and Senate, usually between three and nine altogether. The Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate appoint the conference committee members with advice from the chairs of the committees that wrote the bills. The Speaker and Senate majority leader normally appoint members from the very committees that wrote the bills being sent to conference.

Members of a conference committee meet to work out the differences in the House and Senate bills. If a majority of the committee can agree on a single version of the bill, that version goes to the House and Senate with a conference report. The report explains the version that the committee agreed upon. The House and Senate then vote on that version. They are not allowed to make any changes to it.

If both chambers pass the conference committee's bill by simple majorities, it goes to the president of the United States for consideration. If the bill fails to pass in both chambers, it either dies or can be sent back to the conference committee for further work.

Presidential consideration

When both chambers of Congress pass a bill, it is signed by the president of the Senate (the vice president of the United States) and by the Speaker of the House. The bill then goes to the president of the United States for consideration. If the president signs the bill, it becomes law.

The president, however, can veto, or reject, a bill by sending it back to Congress with reasons for the veto. This is called a return veto. If the president vetoes a bill, it does not become law unless Congress votes to override the president's veto. For a bill to become law despite a president's veto, two-thirds of both the House and Senate must vote for the bill in the override vote. According to a study in 2004, prior to 1969, Congress overrode one out of every eighteen return vetoes. Since 1969, Congress has overridden one out of every five return vetoes. As of 2005, the most recent override happened in February 1998, when Congress overrode a veto from President Bill Clinton (1946–; served 1993–2001) of a bill for funding thirty-eight military construction projects.

Committee work

Drafting legislation is not the only work members of Congress do in committees. Standing committees do oversight work, select committees investigate specific issues, and joint committees handle matters that require action by both chambers of Congress.

Legislative oversight

Many congressional laws concern the operation of federal departments and agencies. Departments and agencies are offices that administer programs for a specific area of government. The Department of Agriculture, for example, administers federal programs for American agribusinesses and farmers. The Central Intelligence Agency collects intelligence (information) concerning national security, or safety.

Most departments and agencies function in the executive branch of the federal government, under the president of the United States. Congress and its standing committees, however, are responsible for the legislation concerning these departments and agencies. To make sure the departments and agencies are working properly, the standing committees of Congress engage in oversight work.

Oversight work can take many forms. Committee members and their staffs often meet informally with agency officials to learn how things are going and to discuss specific problems. A committee might require a department to provide a report about an area of concern. If a department or agency is having a major problem, the committee can hold formal hearings to investigate the situation.

Oversight work can lead to correction of a problem by the department or agency. It also can result in new legislation to change the way a department or agency works or is funded.

Select committees

Select committees, also called special committees, are committees that the House and Senate create, individually, to investigate specific issues. Select committees are usually temporary instead of permanent.

Select committees can investigate governmental problems. In 1987, for example, both chambers of Congress created select committees to investigate the administration of President Ronald Reagan (1911–2004; served 1981–89), which sold weapons to Iran and used the money illegally to provide weapons to rebels fighting the government in Nicaragua. After the terrorist attacks in America on September 11, 2001, the House created the Select Committee on Homeland Security to develop government policies regarding homeland safety in America and to oversee homeland safety activities in the executive branch. It became a standing committee in January 2005.

The chambers of Congress also use select committees to investigate new areas of legislation. Usually, however, select committees cannot receive bills that are introduced into Congress for consideration or send bills to Congress for a vote.

Joint committees

Joint committees are committees that both chambers of Congress create together. These committees usually conduct research and provide Congress with information. The Joint Economic Committee, for example, studies and provides information on the nation's economy. The Joint Committee on Taxation studies and provides information on the tax effects of America's laws and policies. As with select committees, joint committees usually cannot receive bills from Congress for consideration or send bills to Congress for a vote.

The national budget

The national budget is the plan for how America is going to raise and spend money each year. The Constitution gives Congress the power to raise money through taxes and debt, or borrowing, and to decide how to spend it. Under this authority, Congress had primary responsibility for preparing the national budget each year until 1921.

In 1921, Congress passed the Budgeting and Accounting Act, or BAA. The BAA gave the president of the United States the job of preparing an initial budget plan each year. It also created the Bureau of the Budget, a governmental office for helping the president prepare the annual budget. (In 1970, the Bureau of the Budget was renamed the Office of Management and Budget, or OMB.)

Even after 1921, Congress retained the constitutional power to pass the final budget each year in tax and spending laws. The president's power under the BAA, however, made it hard for Congress to change the president's annual budget plan very much. So in 1974, Congress passed another law, called the Budget and Impoundment Control Act, or BICA. This act created standing budget committees in both chambers of Congress. It also created the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO helps Congress with the budget process just as OMB helps the president.

To give Congress more control over the federal budget, BICA established a schedule for the process. It made the government's official budget planning year, or fiscal year, the period that runs from October 1 through the following September 30. Each year by the first Monday in February, the president must present the administration's proposed budget for the upcoming October through September cycle. With assistance from OMB, the president prepares the proposal with budget requests from the various government departments and agencies.

In February, the budget committees of both chambers of Congress begin studying the president's proposal with assistance from the CBO. By spring, the budget committees prepare their own proposal for overall government revenue, debt, and spending levels for the upcoming fiscal year. Congress's standing committees then work on budgets for their areas of concern using the budget committees's spring resolutions as a guide.

For the revenue side of the budget, the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee work on laws pertaining to taxes and other sources of income.

Authorization committees in the various standing committees prepare bills for appropriating, or giving, money to mandatory government programs. A mandatory program is one that must be funded under the law. As of 2005, mandatory spending covers about two-thirds of the annual federal budget.

Finally, the Appropriations Committees in the House and Senate work on thirteen bills assigning discretionary money to the various government departments and agencies. Discretionary money covers programs that are not mandatory, or required, but that Congress chooses to fund. For example, Congress might decide to give money to the Department of Defense for new bomber aircraft. The thirteen bills drafted by the Appropriations Committees cover thirteen broad areas of government.

During the whole process, members of Congress and their staffs meet with the president and the president's staff to negotiate deals on how the final budget will look. If all goes according to plan, which it usually does not, Congress passes the budget in the form of the mandatory appropriations bills and the thirteen discretionary appropriations bills by October 1. If some of the bills are not passed by then, Congress has to pass temporary laws to provide money to keep the government running until all the appropriations bills pass.

Casework

Members of Congress and their staffs spend lots of time on casework, helping constituents with personal governmental problems. Constituents are the people whom a member of Congress represents. A senator's constituents are the residents of the senator's entire state. A representative's constituents are the residents of the congressional district for which the representative was elected. Each congressional district has an average of about six hundred thousand residents.

Constituents ask members of Congress for help with a variety of governmental issues. Some might be having trouble getting a refund from the Internal Revenue Service, which

collects federal income taxes. Others might be having trouble getting a passport from the Department of State for traveling to foreign countries. Senators and representatives help constituents by talking to people in the appropriate government offices to try to resolve such problems. According to Mark Roelofs in The Poverty of American Politics, one estimate says members of Congress spend 80 percent of their time on casework.

Doing casework for constituents is part of building support for reelection. When Congress is in session, the members are usually in committee meetings and on the floor of Congress from Tuesday through Thursday. The rest of the week they fly back to their home states or districts to make public appearances, meet with constituents, campaign for reelection, and pay attention to casework. According to Walter E. Volkomer in American Government, when U.S. representative Gary Ackerman (1942–) of New York was asked how important casework is, he said, "About second to breathing."

Campaigning

Campaigning is not technically part of the job for senators and representatives. They are paid to make laws, not to run for reelection. Campaigning, however, consumes a lot of time for members of Congress.

Under the U.S. Constitution, the entire House of Representatives is up for election every two years. This means representatives who want to serve more than one term have to begin working on reelection campaigns soon after taking office. Representatives who make careers out of working in the House have reelection campaigns working all the time.

Senators face reelection every six years. This means they do not have to spend quite as much time on reelection campaigns as representatives do. The Senate seats are divided into three groups for election purposes. Every two years, when the entire House is up for election, one group of Senate seats faces reelection, so there are always some members of the Senate working on reelection.

The first thing members of Congress must do to get reelected is raise lots of money. In 2000, winning candidates in the House spent an average of about $636,000 on their campaigns. Winning senators spent an average of $5.6 million.

The money for campaigns comes from many sources. Candidates can spend as much of their own money as they want to get elected, which means that wealthy people often have an advantage over candidates who are not as financially endowed. The rest of the money raised during campaigns comes from donations, mostly from political action committees (PACs) and individual citizens.

PACs are organizations that businesses and other groups form for collecting money for donation to political candidates. Members of Congress usually get more donations from PACs than their challengers get. This is because members of Congress can already pass laws favorable to the businesses and organizations that make PAC donations.

In addition to raising money, campaigning involves making public appearances, visiting with voters, creating media advertising campaigns, debating challengers, and appearing on the evening news whenever possible. Name recognition goes a long way toward winning an election.

Statistics show that members of the House who run for reelection win about 90 percent of the time. Senators who run for reelection win most of the time too, but less frequently than members of the House. This is because senators have to win support from an entire state. Representatives only have to win support from a district of about six hundred thousand people, and these districts are usually drawn to favor one of the major political parties, the Republicans or the Democrats.

Miscellaneous offices

Congress has miscellaneous offices that support the lawmaking process or serve another governmental function. One of the most well known is the Library of Congress. President John Adams (1735–1826; served 1797–1801) and Congress created the Library by law in 1800. In 1801, it received its first collection of materials, 740 books and 3 maps ordered from London.

In 1814, during the War of 1812 (1812–14), Great Britain burned many government offices in Washington, D.C., including the 3,000-volume Library of Congress. The next year, former president Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826; served 1801–9) restocked the library by selling his personal collection of 6,487 books to Congress for $23,940. As of 2005, the Library has 29 million books and 99 million other items on 530 miles of shelving. According to the Library's Web site, its mission is "to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations."

Other congressional offices include the Architect of the Capitol, which develops, operates, and maintains the Capitol and congressional office buildings, Library of Congress buildings, Supreme Court building, U.S. Botanic Garden, Capital power plant, and other facilities. The U.S. Botanic Garden operates indoor greenhouses and outdoor gardens for plants from the United States and around the world. The Government Printing Office, created in 1860 to serve as a printer for Congress, collects and publishes information about the federal government for all three of its branches: executive, legislative, and judicial.