House of Representatives: Definition, Facts, History
The presiding officer decides which members to recognize, and can therefore control the course of debate.[62] All speeches must be addressed to the presiding officer, using the words "Mr. Speaker" or "Madam Speaker". Only the presiding officer may be directly addressed in speeches; other members must be referred to in the third person. In most cases, members do not refer to each other only by name, but also by state, using forms such as "the gentleman from Virginia", "the distinguished gentlewoman from California", or "my distinguished friend from Alabama". The chaplain leads the House in prayer at the opening of the day.
U.S. Capitol
In contrast, members of the Senate were appointed by the states until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment (1913), which mandated the direct election of senators. If they do, the bill does not become law unless each House, by a two-thirds vote, votes to override the veto. [T]he constitutional prerogative of the House has been held to apply to all the general appropriations bills, and the Senate's right to amend these has been allowed the widest possible scope. The largest committee of the House is the Committee of the Whole, which, as its name suggests, consists of all members of the House.
Public Policy
2024 elections: Virginia candidates running for US House, Senate - 13newsnow.com WVEC
2024 elections: Virginia candidates running for US House, Senate.
Posted: Tue, 23 Apr 2024 14:37:00 GMT [source]
The party with a majority of seats in the House is known as the majority party. The speaker, committee chairs, and some other officials are generally from the majority party; they have counterparts (for instance, the "ranking members" of committees) in the minority party. The man needed to see the necessary national-security budget bill through, Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House, seemed unfit for the task.
Library of Congress
The Vice President of the United States serves as President of the Senate and may cast the decisive vote in the event of a tie in the Senate. The makeup of the Rules Committee has traditionally been weighted in favor of the majority party, and has been in its current configuration of 9 majority and 4 minority members since the late 1970s. The ranking member leads the minority members of the committee. Go to the Clerk’s site for more information about representatives. To be elected, a representative must be at least 25 years old, a United States citizen for at least seven years and an inhabitant of the state he or she represents.
According to original analysis by Ballotpedia, only 26 congressional districts were predicted to be competitive in 2014. Each state is guaranteed at least one member of the House of Representatives. The allocation of seats is based on the population within the states, and membership is reapportioned every 10 years, following the decennial census.
Some notable examples include Tip O'Neill in the 1980s, Newt Gingrich in the 1990s, John Boehner in the early 2010s, and Nancy Pelosi in the late 2000s and again in the late 2010s and early 2020s. Since the speaker is a partisan officer with substantial power to control the business of the House, the position is often used for partisan advantage. After the whips, the next ranking official in the House party's leadership is the party conference chair (styled as the Republican conference chair and Democratic caucus chair). The House began work on April 1, 1789, when it achieved a quorum for the first time.
During these meetings, party members discuss matters of concern. In most states, major party candidates for each district are nominated in partisan primary elections, typically held in spring to late summer. Exceptions can result in so-called floor fights—convention votes by delegates, with outcomes that can be hard to predict. Especially if a convention is closely divided, a losing candidate may contend further by meeting the conditions for a primary election. The courts generally do not consider ballot access rules for independent and third party candidates to be additional qualifications for holding office and no federal statutes regulate ballot access.
Members of Congress spend much of their time holding hearings and investigations in committee. Refusal to cooperate with a congressional subpoena can result in charges of contempt of Congress, which could result in a prison term. A bill must pass both houses of Congress before it goes to the President for consideration. Though the Constitution requires that the two bills have the exact same wording, this rarely happens in practice. To bring the bills into alignment, a Conference Committee is convened, consisting of members from both chambers. The members of the committee produce a conference report, intended as the final version of the bill.
During the first half of the 19th century, the House was frequently in conflict with the Senate over regionally divisive issues, including slavery. The North was much more populous than the South, and therefore dominated the House of Representatives. However, the North held no such advantage in the Senate, where the equal representation of states prevailed. Information about the source, type, amount, or value of the incomes of representatives, officers, and candidates. Congress also maintains an investigative organization, the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Founded in 1921 as the General Accounting Office, its original mission was to audit the budgets and financial statements sent to Congress by the Secretary of the Treasury and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The House has several powers assigned exclusively to it, including the power to initiate revenue bills, impeach federal officials, and elect the President in the case of an Electoral College tie. Because the number of representatives in each state’s delegation is based on population, larger states such as New York and California elect more representatives to the House, each to two-year terms. A general rule of thumb is that each member of the House of Representatives represents roughly 600,000 people. The webmaster will not forward messages to congressional offices. If you are having problems contacting your representative, you can report the problem using the Contact Webmaster form, write or call your elected representative, or visit the member's website for alternate contact information. When the presidency and Senate are controlled by a different party from the one controlling the House, the speaker can become the de facto "leader of the opposition".
Information about any legal expenses incurred by a candidate or current representative. Elected by the whole of the House of Representatives, the Speaker acts as leader of the House and combines several institutional and administrative roles.
All committees have websites where they post information about the legislation they are drafting. Committees in both houses review bills that have been introduced by their colleagues, holding hearings in which their merits are debated. The Speaker of the House is also the second person in the U.S. presidential line of succession—the order in which presidents are replaced if they die, resign or are removed from office—after the Vice President and before the President pro tempore of the Senate. The two houses of Congress may effectively have the same legislative powers, but they operate differently. Representatives of the House are addressed as “The Honorable,” before their names, or as congressman, congresswoman, or representative.
The majority party members and the minority party members meet separately to select their leaders. Third parties rarely have had enough members to elect their own leadership, and independents will generally join one of the larger party organizations to receive committee assignments. Each of the two political parties also elect a “Whip”—the Majority Whip for the party with the most seats, and the Minority Whip for the other party—from their House delegations. The whip’s official role is to count potential votes for bills being debated for the party leaders.
The committees also play an important role in the control exercised by Congress over governmental agencies. Cabinet officers and other officials are frequently summoned before the committees to explain policy. The Constitution (Article I, section 6) prohibits members of Congress from holding offices in the executive branch of government—a chief distinction between parliamentary and congressional forms of government.
The office may list a public e-mail address or provide a form directly on the member's website. The U.S. House of Representatives does not provide a listing of public e-mail addresses for the elected Representatives. The House is also served by several officials who are not members.
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