Chapter 11: CongressCongress Versus ParliamentI.A person becomes a candidate for representative or senator in the U.S. Congress by running in a primary election. Except in a few places, political parties exercise little control over the choice over who is nominated to run for congressional office.A.Voters select candidates in the primaries because of their personalities, positions on issues, or overall reputation.B.Parliament tends to be made up of people loyal to the national party issues. A congress tends to be made up of people who think of themselves as independent representatives of their districtswho expect to vote as to their own constituents.II.The fact that members of Congress do not select the president makes them more powerful.Representatives can vote without worrying that their votes will cause the government to collapse andwithout fearing that a failure to support their party will lead to their removal from the ballot in the nextelection.A.Congress has independent powers that it can exercise without regard to presidential preferences. Political parties do not control nominations for office, and thus they cannotdiscipline members Congress who fail to support the party leadership.III.Members of Congress can initiate, modify, approve, or reject laws, and they share with the presidentsupervision of the administrative agencies of the government.A.Congress tends to be a decentralized institution, with each member more interested in his or her own views and those of his or her voters than with the programs proposed by the president.The Evolution of Congress
The Framers chose to create a bicameral legislature—with a House of Representatives, to be electeddirectly by the people, and a Senate, consisting of two members from each state, to be chosen by thelegislatures of each state. Though all “legislative powers” were to be vested in Congress, those powerswould be shared with the president, limited to powers explicitly conferred on the federal government,and subject to the power of the Supreme Court to declare acts of Congress unconstitutional.II.If Congress were to act quickly and decisively as a body, then there would have to be strong centralleadership, restrictions for debates, few opportunities for stalling tactics, and minimal committeeinterference. If the interests of individual members were to be protected or enhanced, then there wouldhave to be weak leadership, rules allowing for delay and discussion, and many opportunities for committee activity.A.The general trend in this century has been toward decentralizing decision-making andenhancing the power of the individual member at the expense of the congressional leadership.III.The House of Representatives has often changed the way in which it is organized and led.A.The House faces fundamental problems: it wants to be both big and powerful, and its memberswant to be powerful both as individuals and as a group. But being big makes it hard for theHouse to be powerful unless some small group is given authority to run it.B.If a group runs the place, however, the individual members lack much power. Individuals cangain power, but only at the expense of making the House harder to run and thus reducing thecollective power in government.IV.The Senate does not face these problems. It is small enough that it can be run without giving muchauthority to any small group of leaders.A.From the first the Senate was small enough that no time limits had to placed on how long asenator could speak. This meant that there never as anything like the Rules Committee thatcontrolled the amount of debate.B.The big changes in the Senate came not from any fight about how to run it, but from a disputeover how its members should be chosen. The number of wealthy party leaders and businesspeople in the Senate led to a demand for direct, popular election of Senators.
Amendment was approved in 1913, making election determined by a popular vote.
The other major issue in the development of the Senate was the filibuster—a prolonged speech, or series of speeches, made to the delay action of a legislative assembly.A.Filibusters had become a common and unpopular feature of Senate life by the end of thenineteenth century. It was used by liberals and conservatives alike.