THE BICAMERAL CONGRESS

The Congress is the most important part of the national government

US Constitution: Article 1, Section 1: All Legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a congress of the United States, which shall consist of a senate and a house of representatives.

THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Requirements: Minimum of 25 years old; must have been a citizen for 7 years and; must be a legal resident of the state you represent

Representation is determined by population. No state has less than one.

THE SENATE

Each state has two senators which brings the total count of senators to 100

Requirements: Minimum of 30 years old; must have been a citizen for 9 years and; must be a legal resident of the state you represent

Originally, senators were chosen by the state legislature which meant that they tend to be important members of the state. This changed with the 17^th Amendment, and now, senators are elected by the people, just like the representatives.

MAJOR DIFFERENCES OF HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATE, according to the Constitution

            HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

• The House of Representatives is given the power to impeach the president and other federal officials. The house ‘impeaches’ an official by deciding that person did something bad enough to bring him to trial. Impeachment is like a criminal indictment. Once the official is impeached, the trial happens in the senate. If it’s the President who has been impeached, the Chief Justice of the Court presides; otherwise it’s the vice president. You don’t let a vice president preside over an impeachment trial because he has a vested interest in seeing the president removed.
• The House of Representatives decide on the presidential elections if no candidate wins the majority of the electoral college
• POWER OF THE PURSE: Article 1, Section 7: “All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives.” Any bill that raises taxes starts in the House of Representatives.

THE SENATE

• The Senate holds impeachment trials.
• The Senate ratify treatises which require 2/3 vote of the Senate.
• The Senate votes to confirm the appointment of Executive Officers that require senate confirmation. Some of these include the cabinet secretaries, federal judges

Why do we have 2?

      Historical Reason: When the Constitution was being written, the framers could not agree on what kind of legislature to have because they came from states with different interests. Delegates from states with larger populations wanted legislators to be chosen on the basis of population so that their states could have more legislators and more power. This is called proportional representation. States with small populations understandably, didn’t want proportional representation; they favoured equal legislation in the legislature which would give them equal power. Large states supported what was called the ‘Virginia Plan’ while small states wanted the ‘New Jersey Plan’ and they argued over it until a compromise was reached. Since it was brokered by Connecticut’s Roger Sherman, it was called the ‘Connecticut Compromise’ or ‘The Great Compromise.’ The compromise was: an upper house with equal representation and a lower house with proportional representation.

      Practical Reason: One of the main reasons to divide the legislature and give the two houses different powers is to make so that the legislature doesn’t have too much power. James Madison, one of the frames, wrote in Federalist 51: “In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates. The remedy for this inconvenience is to divide the legislature into different branches… and to render them by different modes of election and different principles of action as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit.”

The ideas that one house of the legislature can limit the power of the other house is called an intra-branch checker.

Why were specific powers given to each house?

Senators are expected to be older than the representatives; older people are wiser and more experienced, and the framers wanted the senate to be more serious or dignified and more deliberative than the house. It was supposed to be immune from the desires of the public which the framers were afraid of because of their unfortunate propensity to riot. One of the ways that the framers hoped to ensure this was by giving senators a six-year term which really would mean that it could ignore the rantings and ravings of the constituents for at least 5 years. Because the senate is supposed to be more deliberative and more insulated from public opinion, they were the ones that were given the power to confirm public ministers and to ratify treatises. With their age and experience, senators were expected to greatly assess character and be able to govern based on the sense of what is in the public interest.

In the house, the representatives are supposed to take in the desires of the people in their districts who voted for them, acting in the role of delegates. The main way the framers try to ensure the representatives could be more responsive to the voters, other than having them directly elected by the voters, was to give them two year terms. This meant that they had to be responsive to the changing opinion of voters in their districts, otherwise they could easily be voted out of office.