POL Chapter 9

Among the factors related to the U.S. electoral system which affect who gets elected are:

(1)incumbency (2) the way congressional district lines are drawn.

Different kinds of congressional committees

1. Standing committees 2. Select Committees 3. Joint committees 4. Conference committee

(2) The way congressional districts are drawn

Every 10 years, state legislatures must redraw election districts, via a process called "redistricting" to reflect population changes pursuant to the national census. Each district is supposed to include approximately 650,000 constituents. This is a highly political process because the party with a majority in the state legislature, which controls the redistricting process, frequently employs "gerrymandering" when drawing the new district lines.

Some Statistical differences between the House of the Senate

Number representing Each State: House: Depends on population of state, Senate:2 Length of term: House: 2years, Senate: 6 years. Total number of members of each house: House of Representatives: 435, Senate: 100.

Veto

The president's power to turn down a bill passed by congress and thereby prevents it from becoming a law.

Seniority Rule

a congressional practice that assigns the chair of a committee to the member of the majority party with the longest continuous service on the committee.

Conference committee

a joint committee composed of house and senate members created to work out a compromise on House and Senate versions of a bill.

Gerrymandering

a manner of redistricting that gives an unfair advantage to one political party. (The term dates back to the early 1800s when Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry proposed a redistricting plan to the state legislature that created a salamander-shaped district drawn to help his party win another seat.)

Standing committees

a permanent committee with the power to propose and write legislation that covers a particular subject (such as finance or agriculture). (The standing committees receive proposals for legislation and transform them into official bills. Among the most important standing committees are those in charge of finance such as the House Ways and means committee and the senate finance committee (because they raise money via taxes) and the senate and house appropriations committees ( because they determine how the tax money will be spent).)

Cloture

a procedure to end a filibuster by which 3/5's of the senate (i.e., 60 senators) must vote to end the filibuster.

Bill

a proposed law that is being considered by Congress.

Filibuster

a tactic used by members of the Senate to prevent action on bills they oppose by continuously holding the floor and speaking until the majority backs down. (This tactic does not exist in the House of Representatives because in the house a member does not have the right to continuously hold the floor.)

Joint committees

congressional committees formed of members of both the House and the Senate. There are only a handful of such committees. An example is the joint committee that oversees the Library of Congress.

Incumbency

holding a political office for which one is running. Members of congress who run for re-election have a very good chance of winning. Supporters of term limits argue that such limits are the only way to get new faces into Congress.

Term Limits

laws that limit the number of terms an elected official can serve.

Pork Barrel legislation

monetary appropriations (i,e., spending) made by congress for local projects that are often not needed but that are created to help local representatives win re-election in their home districts. (A famous example of pork-barrel legislation occurred in 2005 when congress passed a law that gave many millions of dollars to Alaska to build a bridge that would connect a small town to a barely populated island. This became known as "the bridge to nowhere." The proposed bridge became a symbol of wasteful congressional spending)

Patronage

opportunities for members of congress to confer special favors to supporters. (For example, a construction company makes a financial contribution to the re-election campaign of a congressman. That construction company is then awarded a major gov't construction contract as a result of the congressman's influence.)

Select Committees

temporary legislative committees set up to investigate particular issues. The investigations frequently involve political scandals. These committees often hold hearings.

District

the area from which an official is elected.

Speaker of the House

the chief presiding officer of the House of Representatives. (The most important leader in the House. The speaker is always a member of the majority party. The speaker can influence the legislative agendas, the fate of individual pieces of legislation, and members' positions within the House. The speaker is second in line for the presidency in the event that both the president and vice president can no longer continue in office. The present speaker of the House is Representative John Boehner.)

President Pro Tempore

the presiding officer of the Senate when the president of the Senate is absent. (Given that the vice president of the U.S. is rarely present in the senate, the president pro tempore is the usual presiding officer of the senate. He does not receive an additional vote. A significant aspect of this post is the following: the president pro tempore is third in line to the presidency. The president pro tempore is usually the senator from the majority party that has spent the most years in the senate. The President Pro Tempore at this time is democratic senator Patrick Leahy.)

Redistricting

the process of redrawing election districts to reflect population changes.

Constituency

the residents in the elected official's district.

President of the Senate

the vice president of the united stated who presides over the united states Senate. However, the president of the Senate has only one significant power in the Senate; he can vote to break a tie vote. He can't vote unless there is a tie.

One of the most famous select committees in American history was the senate Watergate committee in the 1970s.

this committee was created to investigate the burglary by Republican party operatives of the Democratic Party national headquarters in a hotel/office complex called "The Watergate." The purpose of the break in was to place wiretaps on the telephones of the Democratic Party leadership so that the White house, during the presidency of Richard Nixon, would lean the strategy of the Democratic Party in the upcoming presidential election.