Congress II I II III Leadership Structure Committees How a bill becomes a law I The Constitution stipulates the leadership in the House and also in the Senate Constitution says the House will determine its speaker and other officers for itself Vice President will preside over the Senate as the President The VP only presides over the Senate if there will be a tie vote that he has to break Constitution says the Senate will choose a president pro tem to preside over it President pro tem is a ceremonial office norm is that the most senior senator from the majority party will hold the title More of a symbolic role Parties pick up the idea of leadership and who will be leaders in congress The House is the more complex of the 2 houses At the beginning of every congress the parties will come together in a caucus Democrats caucus together and Republicans caucus together If you re the majority party you ll elect 3 big leadership positions a speaker a majority leader and a majority whip If you re the minority party you ll elect 2 big leadership positions minority leader and a minority whip The Speaker of the House is a job of the entire House does have to be elected by everyone The majority party will put up their speaker candidate for a vote and the minority party puts up their minority leader Majority party will win Leadership in the house is more important than the leadership in the Senate Why is the house different from the senate Size of House is 435 Senate is 100 Power kind of goes down in the House Speaker is the most important Senate elects their leaders the same way President of pro tem is important Majority and minority have the bulk of the power in the Senate McConnell and Reid Whips majority and minority whips They mostly do communication The system is about keeping tabs on your party s members How will they vote Etc Keeping up with their behavior Tries to whip you into shape Whips are more important in the House Hoyer and McCarthy In the House these are BIG jobs Even though they are the 3rd man down but you are basically on your way up or also on your way down Whips in the Senate are less important II In a legislature committees are where you will see the policy making Need committees to turn a bill into a law When you think about the House they have a lot of action bills and people They use their committees more than the Senate The Senate uses the Senate Floor for debate and discussion The House cannot use its floor because it is too large 4 different kinds of committees with 4 different functions 1 Standing Committees Work horse committees They do the bulk of the law making They handle bills They only have members from one House Standing committees in the House and in the Senate They are permanent You don t have to recreate standing committees at the beginning of a Congress because they already exist Create them or eliminate them Permanent in the sense that you don t have to recreate them they are permanent in the sense that you can change them House has more and relies more on them 2 Joint committee from both House and Senate Most congresses have a committee on taxation Few policy areas that have joint committees tend to be permanent You don t have to recreate them on taxation 3 Conference committee from both House and the Senate Its purpose is to reconcile a House bill and a Senate bill into one bill Once it has done its job it s over They are temporary 4 Select committee Tends to exist in only one house either Senate members only or House members only typically It s created for a specific purpose Formed for one thing and they do it and then that is it The Senate Select committee that investigated Water Gate Created many select committees in the beginning of our system with unintended consequences They had to create these Select Committees because they kept dissolving Then they created Standing Committees so they didn t have to recreate every time Few Select Committees today but many Standing Committees III Same bill has to be passed through the House and the Senate as the SAME bill without any differences Starting with the House either 1 or multiple members propose a bill Senators cannot propose bills in the House and House cannot propose bills in the Senate House writes up the bill and puts their names on it and then they give it to the speaker of the House who then refers it to a committee Typically the committee assignment will be based on the topic of the bill BUT the speaker can do what he wants because of his power The bill can go to 3 different committees If the Speaker likes the bill he is more likely to send it to a committee who likes the bill If he doesn t like the bill then he will send it to a committee who will kill it It s important on which committee your bill goes to 90 95 of bills will die at the committee level After the Speaker receives the bill and sends it to a committee it will go to a sub committee In order to get out of a sub committee or a committee you need a majority vote 3 2 vote at least Sub committee level will have debate or hearings to figure out what they think of the bill This is the mark up stage most important process It is when you take it line by line word by word and decide if you want to change the wording or another sentence needs to be added for clarity In the U S anybody can watch this process We have a Sunshine Law where you can watch them mark up a bill Excluding national defense bills Example of mark up to help your party If you pick a policy area that is partisan you can see it easily Gun control you know where the parties stand on gun control Say there s a gun control bill in a committee Dem strengthen bill Rep weaken it but that is wrong If Republican makes it stronger Democrats will lose some supporters for the bill because it is stronger They will lose their moderate votes that are in the middle They are arguing the opposite of what they should be If they have a very strong bill it will most likely not pass It goes back to the committee after the sub committee It then goes to the Rules Committee which is not in the Senate only in the House It is influenced by the Speaker of the House It is up to the Rules Committee to decide how the bill will hit the House floor It decides how much debate will be allowed on the bill and also it decides the type of amendments that will be allowed It will either attach an open …
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