2.2 - Structures, Powers, and Functions of Congress

The Congressional Committee System

Most of the actual work in Congress happens in committees, since it's basically impossible to work on bills with all 100 senators or 435 representatives at once.

Purpose: smaller groups can dig into bills and build expertise in specific policy areas.

Majority party control: the majority party always has more seats on every committee, and the committee chair always comes from the majority party too.

What committees do: mark up (edit and revise) bills, hold hearings with experts and lobbyists, and perform oversight to make sure laws are being implemented the way Congress intended.

Types of committees

Type	Description
Standing Committee	Permanent committee covering a specific subject area (budget, agriculture, etc). Most bills die here and never move on.
Joint Committee	Includes members from both the House and Senate.
Conference Committee	The most important joint committee. Formed when the House and Senate pass different versions of the same bill, to work out one compromise version.
Select/Special Committee	Temporary committee for urgent, specific purposes, usually investigations (like Watergate or January 6th).

Congressional Leadership

Speaker of the House: the most powerful position in the House. Elected by a majority vote of the whole House, which in practice means the majority party's candidate. The Speaker presides over the House, promotes the party's agenda, and heavily controls which bills even get a vote by deciding what reaches the floor.

Senate leadership:

The Vice President is technically President of the Senate, but their only real job is breaking tie votes.
The Majority Leader is the actual leader of the Senate, deciding which bills reach the floor and steering the rules to hit party goals.

Whips: exist in both parties and both chambers. Their job is keeping party members in line and counting votes ahead of time.

Legislative Process in the House (Formal)

The House runs on strict, formal rules.

House Rules Committee: sets the rules for floor debate, including time limits and whether amendments are even allowed.

Bills open to amendments are open-rule bills; bills that can't be amended are closed-rule bills.

Germaneness Requirement: everything said on the floor has to stay on topic.

Discharge Petition: a rarely used tool where a majority of the whole House can force a bill out of committee and onto the floor for a vote.

Any representative can file one, but it only works if 218 members (a majority of the House) sign it. That usually means members of the majority party going against their own leaders, so it rarely succeeds.

Committee of the Whole: the entire House temporarily acts as one big committee to speed things along.

Revenue Bills: every bill that raises taxes has to start in the House (Article I, Section 7), though the Senate can amend it. This gives the chamber closest to the people the first say over taxes.

Legislative Process in the Senate (Informal)

The Senate has far fewer rules, which gives individual senators a lot more power.

Filibuster: a long speech meant to delay or block a vote. A senator can hold the floor as long as they keep talking.

Silent Filibuster (Double Tracking): the modern, easier version, where a senator just announces they intend to filibuster and the bill gets set aside, basically held hostage. This has made filibusters much more common.

Holds: a tactic that stops a bill from being discussed or voted on until the senator who placed the hold removes it.

Cloture Motion: the way to forcibly end a filibuster or hold.

Needs a three fifths supermajority, 60 votes, for most legislation.
Once cloture passes, debate is capped at 30 more hours, and then the Senate votes. This is why major legislation often effectively needs 60 votes just to move forward.
Nominations are different: since 2013 for most nominees and 2017 for Supreme Court justices, cloture on a nomination only needs a simple majority. This change is often called the "nuclear option."

Riders: unrelated amendments senators tack onto a bill.

Unanimous Consent: if every member agrees, the Senate can skip debate entirely and speed the bill through.

This is how most bills actually reach the Senate floor: party leaders work out a unanimous consent agreement that sets the terms for debate. Since one objection is enough to block it, a single senator has a lot of leverage, which is where holds come from.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

The House and Senate are different by design, and a bill has to get through both in exactly the same form. In Federalist No. 51 (1788), Madison argued that the legislature is naturally the strongest branch, so it should be split into two chambers with "different modes of election and different principles of action." Making lawmaking harder was the point.

Introduction: a member of Congress introduces the bill (revenue bills must start in the House), and it's referred to a committee.

Committee: the committee or one of its subcommittees holds hearings, marks up the bill, and votes on whether to send it to the full chamber. Most bills die here.

Reaching the floor: in the House, the Rules Committee sets the rules for debate. In the Senate, the bill usually comes up by unanimous consent, and it can be stalled by a hold or a filibuster unless 60 senators vote for cloture.

Floor vote: the bill needs a simple majority in each chamber.

Conference committee: if the House and Senate pass different versions, a conference committee works out one compromise version, and both chambers vote on it again.

The president: signs it into law or vetoes it. Congress can override a veto with a two-thirds vote in both chambers (more in 2.4).

Congress's Power of the Purse and Spending

Congress controls the federal budget, which topped $6 trillion in 2023. Spending falls into two buckets:

Category	Description	Examples
Mandatory Spending	Required by law, happens automatically, makes up about 70% of federal spending. Can only be changed through new legislation.	Entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and interest on the national debt
Discretionary Spending	The remaining roughly 30% that Congress and the President negotiate over each year	Defense, education, and other annually funded programs

A useful distinction within entitlements: non-means tested benefits go out regardless of income, like Social Security and Medicare, which are based on age rather than need.

Why this matters for the budget: discretionary spending has to be approved every year through appropriations bills (if Congress misses the deadline and doesn't pass a temporary funding bill, parts of the government shut down). Meanwhile, entitlement costs keep growing as more people retire and health care gets more expensive. Unless taxes go up or the government borrows more (a bigger deficit), that growth squeezes the discretionary side, leaving less each year for defense, education, and infrastructure.

Debt, Deficit, and Legislative Tactics

Budget Deficit: happens when the federal government spends more than it takes in during a given year.

National Debt: the total amount of money the federal government owes overall.

Pork Barrel Legislation: tangible benefits, like jobs or funded programs, steered to a district to help a representative win reelection.

It's usually tucked into a much larger appropriations (spending) bill, so the local project rides along with spending everyone has to pass. Example: the "Bridge to Nowhere," more than $200 million in a 2005 highway bill for a bridge to a small Alaska island with about 50 residents.

Logrolling (Vote Trading): when members agree to vote for each other's bills ("you vote for mine, I'll vote for yours"). This often shows up in omnibus bills, which bundle several unrelated pieces of legislation together to round up enough votes.

Big picture

Congress gets most of its real work done in standing committees, which refine bills and handle oversight. The House and Senate operate completely differently: the House is tightly controlled by the Rules Committee, while the Senate is loose enough that a single member can filibuster and grind things to a halt. Getting past a filibuster usually takes a 60 vote cloture motion, giving the minority outsized power. Meanwhile, Congress's control of the budget is more limited than it looks, since about 70% of spending is mandatory and locked in, leaving only about 30% for Congress and the President to fight over every year.

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