This is a video transcription for Political Science 1 American Government under Dr. Misty Knight-Finley

CONGRESSIONAL LEADERSHIP

Hi I’m Craig and this is Crash Course. Government and Politics and today we’re going to examine the leadership structure of Congress. I know pretty exciting stuff. Now calm down let me explain.

Are you ready to talk about congressional leadership. You better be. So the congressional leadership are the congress persons with titles like Majority Leader and Minority Whip and they have a lot to do with political parties.

So we’re going to talk about what the political parties do in Congress as well. Even if you don’t follow politics you probably have heard of the name and titles if not the functions of the various leaders.

I’m going to need some help on this one so let’s go to the clowns zone in the clown zone today.

I’ve got house clone and Senate clone to help me explain congressional leadership House clone in the house they get away.

The leader of the House of Representatives is the speaker of the house and he or she is the third most powerful person in the country. The speaker is always elected by whichever party is in the majority. These elections take place every two years because the whole house is elected every two years. That’s a lot of elections at the time of the shooting this episode the speaker of the House is John Boehner from Ohio.

Known for his tan tears and tacos. Yeah he’s oddly really good at making tacos. I had the barbecue pork at his house when I had the beef tongue. He called it my Lingua interesting choice. The speaker has two assistance to help run the house. The majority whip has the primary task of counting votes on important pieces of legislation and making the party members vote along with their party whipping them into line I suppose. The third line is the House majority leader who helps the majority and probably does other stuff but mainly he’s chosen by the Speaker because he’s popular with particular factions within the party. The minority party that’s the one with fewer members elected in a term also has a minority leader and the minority whip. But no speaker the minority leader is the de facto spokesperson for the minority party in the House which is why you often see him or her on TV or on your phone or i pad your pager.

I don’t think you could see it on your pager. Hey that was some pretty good stuff. You said their house clown. What’s the deal with the Senate Santa.