Congress
US Politics Fundamentals
Chapter 3 · Congress: The House & the Senate
Chapter 1 introduced the Great Compromise only far enough to explain why Congress has two chambers built on two different logics — population for the House, equal state votes for the Senate. This chapter goes the rest of the way: what each chamber actually looks like in practice, what powers belong to one chamber and not the other, and the Senate's own real, self-imposed supermajority rule that goes well beyond anything the Constitution itself requires.
The House of Representatives: Size, Terms & Volatility
The House currently has 435 voting members, apportioned among the states by population — exactly the principle the Virginia Plan won in Chapter 1's own compromise. That number of 435 isn't in the Constitution itself; it was fixed by ordinary federal law, the Reapportionment Act of 1929, and hasn't changed since even as the US population has more than tripled.
Every House member serves a two-year term, and the entire chamber is up for election at once, every single election cycle. That's a deliberate design choice: the House was built to be the chamber most directly and most frequently answerable to the public mood.
The Speaker of the House
Elected by the House itself (in practice, by the majority party), the Speaker is the chamber's presiding officer and, per the real current line of succession, second in line for the presidency — right after the Vice President.
Originating Revenue Bills
Article I gives the House the exclusive constitutional power to originate revenue and appropriation bills — tax and spending legislation must start in the House before the Senate can act on it.
Sole Power of Impeachment
As Chapter 2 covered, only the House can bring impeachment charges, by a simple majority — the Senate has no power to initiate that process on its own.
The Senate: Size, Terms & Staggered Stability
The Senate has exactly 100 members — two per state, regardless of population, the New Jersey Plan's own real victory from Chapter 1. Each senator serves a six-year term, three times longer than a House member's — but the Senate never faces a full turnover election the way the House does. Terms are staggered into three roughly equal classes, so only about one-third of the Senate is actually up for election in any given two-year cycle.
The Vice President Presides
The Constitution names the Vice President as President of the Senate — but the VP votes only to break an exact tie, making it a rarely-used, purely tie-breaking power rather than a routine legislative role.
President Pro Tempore
Presides over the Senate whenever the Vice President is absent — which, in practice, is most of the time. Third in the presidential line of succession, right after the Speaker of the House.
Advice, Consent & Trial
Exclusively the Senate's own real powers, both covered in Chapter 2: confirming presidential appointments and ratifying treaties by a two-thirds vote, and trying — and, by a two-thirds vote, convicting — an impeached official.
The Filibuster: A Real Rule the Constitution Never Wrote
Every supermajority threshold covered so far in this course — Article V's amendment process, veto overrides, treaty ratification, impeachment conviction — comes directly from the Constitution's own text. The filibuster is different: it exists purely because of the Senate's own internal rules, not because the Constitution requires it.
Senate rules historically allowed a senator to speak for as long as they wished, with no built-in mechanism to force debate to a close — unlike the House, which adopted rules early on that let a simple majority cut off debate. Ending a Senate filibuster requires invoking cloture under Rule XXII, and current Senate rules set that threshold at three-fifths of the full Senate — 60 of 100 votes — for most legislation, regardless of how large a simple majority actually supports the bill.
Two Co-Equal Chambers, Not One Dominant and One Subordinate
UK Politics Fundamentals Chapter 4 established a real, important asymmetry in the UK's own bicameral Parliament: the House of Lords can revise and delay legislation, but under the Parliament Acts 1911/1949, the elected House of Commons can ultimately push a bill through even over the Lords' own objection. The US Congress has no equivalent override mechanism at all.
| US Congress | UK Parliament | |
|---|---|---|
| Both chambers elected? | Yes — House and Senate both directly elected | No — Commons elected, Lords is not (UK Politics Fundamentals Ch.4) |
| Can one chamber override the other? | No — a bill needs identical text passed by both House and Senate, full stop | Yes — the Commons can override a Lords rejection under the Parliament Acts |
| Which chamber is "dominant"? | Neither, by constitutional design — they are formally co-equal | The Commons, structurally, since it holds the real override power |
Hands-On Exercises
A tax bill needs to become law. Using this chapter's own material, explain which chamber it must originate in, and why — tying your answer back to the specific constitutional rule that requires it.
A bill has 55 votes of support in the Senate — a clear majority — but its opponents refuse to stop debating it. Explain exactly why this bill can still fail to pass, using the real cloture threshold from this chapter.
Explain why the US Congress has no equivalent to the UK's Parliament Acts — and what that difference tells you about how a disagreement between the House and Senate actually gets resolved (or doesn't).
Quick Reference
- House: 435 members (fixed by the 1929 Reapportionment Act), apportioned by population, 2-year terms, entire chamber up every cycle
- Senate: 100 members (2 per state), 6-year terms, staggered into 3 classes (~1/3 up every 2 years)
- House-only powers: originates revenue bills; sole power of impeachment (simple majority)
- Senate-only powers: advice and consent on appointments; treaty ratification (2/3); impeachment trial and conviction (2/3)
- Speaker of the House: 2nd in presidential line of succession
- President pro tempore: 3rd in presidential line of succession
- Filibuster/cloture: a Senate rule, not in the Constitution; 60 of 100 votes needed to force a final vote on most bills
- Core contrast: House and Senate are formally co-equal — unlike the UK's Commons, which can override the Lords under the Parliament Acts