ASSIGNMENT

What does Congress do (in theory)?

 

Article I of the Constitution details the powers and responsibilities of Congress.  It is important that Congress is defined in Article I; the Founding Fathers seemed to have been suggesting that Congress is the most important branch and should probably have the most power.  

As a reminder, some of the powers of Congress are: 

· Establish and collect taxes

· Regulate commerce and the federal budget 

· Make federal laws

· Create naturalization laws 

· Coin money and regulate its value 

· Declare war

Congress also some important powers regarding checks and balances:

· With a 2/3 vote, Congress can overturn a Presidential veto

· The Senate must confirm/approve of Presidential nominees (such as nominees to head the major government departments and Supreme Court justices) 

· Congress can impeach and remove the President from office (more on this in a few weeks) 

The Senate

The US Senate is one of the chambers of Congress.  This chamber is made up of 100 individuals, 2 of whom are elected from each state.  

Senators are elected to 6-year terms; meaning, if a Senator is elected is 2018, that individual serves until 2024 before facing reelection.  

Senators do NOT have term limits; meaning, there is no limit to how many times a Senator can be reelected.  They must keep getting reelected in order to keep their office, but as long as they keep getting reelected, then they can keep their job for as long as they want!

In the US, federal elections happen every 2 years, in even numbered years (the next major federal election is in 2020).  NOT all Senators are up for reelection every two years; in general, only about 1/3 of the Senate will face reelection in a particular election year.  Meaning, these are staggered elections and in which only around 33 Senate seats will up for election in 2020.  

Senators represent the entire state.  Since every state has two senators, that means senators from large states, like California, have to represent a much larger number of people than senators from smaller states.  For example, the population of California is approximately 39 million people.  The population of North Dakota is 760,000.  So California's two senators represent approximately 19 million people each, whereas the two senators from North Dakota represent 380,000 people each.  That's a HUGE DIFFERENCE!!  

Currently, there are 53 Republican senators, 45 Democratic senators, and 2 independent senators (both of these senators almost always vote with the Democratic Party).  

Some other important facts about the Senate: 

· In order to run for the Senate, you must be at least 30 years old

· Senators have the power to approve or not approve of Presidential nominees.  For example, when the President nominates someone like Secretary of Defense, a majority of the Senate must approve of that person (the House of Representatives is NOT involved in this process).  This is called the confirmation power.

· Originally in the Constitution, the people did not have the ability to directly elect their Senators.  Instead, they were appointed by state legislatures.  However, that changed with the 17th amendment (in 1913) which allowed the people to vote for their senators.  This is yet another example of how the Founding Fathers wanted limits to the power of the people

· The two Senators for California are Dianne Feinstein (Links to an external site.) and Kamala Harris (Links to an external site.).  Feinstein is 85 years old, was first elected to the Senate in 1992 and was reelected in 2018.  Harris is 54 years old, and is in her first term as Senator and was elected in 2016.  She is also running for president (Links to an external site.)

· Senators have an incumbency advantage.  Incumbents refer to those individuals who are already in office and are trying to remain in office, meaning, that Senators who are running for reelection have a very good chance of winning their campaign.  So the senators who are already there are very likely to stay there.  Most research shows that approximately 80% of incumbents will win their reelection campaign.  Why do you think this is?  What are the consequences of the incumbency advantage?

· In case you are curious, senators make on average $174,000.  

The House of Representatives

The House of Representatives is the other chamber of Congress.  This chamber is made up of 435 members.  Representation in the House is based off of the population of each state; meaning, the more populated states have more people that represent that state in the House.  For example, there are 53 members of the House that represent California whereas there is 1 member of the House that represents North Dakota (not that I am trying to pick on North Dakota!).  If you are asking yourself, why 53?  The next page will answer that question! 

Members of the House are elected to 2-year terms; meaning, that if a member of the House is elected in 2018, they serve until 2020.  EVERY seat in the House is up for reelection EVERY two years.  These are not staggered elections.  All 435 members of the House have to run for reelection every even-numbered year.  

There are NO term limits in the House.  Members of the House can serve for as long as they keep getting reelected. 

Members of the House represent a district within a state and not the entire state.  A district is a geographical region of the state.  District boundaries are man-made and change from time to time.  District boundaries are not the same as city lines or county lines.  One county can have several districts within its boundaries.  You are only able to vote for one of the individuals running for election from YOUR district (meaning where you live).  You cannot vote for all members of the House running in California.  

Members of the House represent approximately 700,000 people in each district.  

Currently, in the House, there are 235 Democrats, 198 Republicans, and 2 vacant seats.  

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Some other important facts about the House are: 

· The House is often called "the people's house."  The idea is that members of the House are supposed to be very responsive to their people.  An example of this is that members of the House have to run for reelection very frequently.  The thinking is that by frequently running for election, members of the House will know what their people want and will be more responsive to their needs. 

· As mentioned above, currently the Democratic Party has the majority in the House (they have more members of the House than the Republican Party).  The Democrats in the House vote for who they want to be their "leader."  This individual is called the Speaker of the House.  The Speaker is a very powerful and influential individual who is not only the leader of the Democratic Party in the House, but also tends to speak for the party and plays a large role in the law-making process.  The current Speaker is Nancy Pelosi, who represents the San Francisco district. 

· Individuals running for office in the House must be at least 25 years old. 

· Where you live determines who your member of the House is.  If you live in the Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley, or San Leandro areas, your member of the House is Barbara Lee (Links to an external site.).  Lee is 72 years old, was first elected to the House in 1998, and was just reelected again in 2018.

· The incumbency advantage is also prominent in the House; approximately 80-85% of incumbents win reelection.

· Members of the House also on average earn $174,000.   

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So we have established that the terms for the Senate and the House are different (6 year terms in the Senate and 2 year terms in the House).  But what are the consequences of this difference? 

Imagine you were hired to a job and were guaranteed you would have that job for 2 years.  Then imagine you were hired to a different job and were guaranteed to have that job for 6 years.  How would your thinking from the first job to the second?  How might your priorities change?  

More likely, you would think about getting something done quickly in your job that you have for 2 years.  Your priorities would be short-term and you would try to boost your resume by accomplishing as much as you could in a relatively short amount of time.  You would also have to remember that you are going to be running for reelection very soon, and you will want to talk about your accomplishments in your two years in office.   

On the other hand, for the job you have for 6 years, you would be more likely to think long-term.  Your focus might be on big picture things that you could spend some time working on.  You don't need to have anything done in a year or two, so you can prioritize things that might take longer and things that might be more ambitious.  

This could be a consequence of the different term lengths in Congress.  The House is more focused on getting things done now, whereas the Senate might prioritize bigger picture items that happen down the road.  This could be both a good or a bad thing, depending on your point of view.  

Reapportionment

What is reapportionment? This is the process for deciding how many representatives a state will receive.  This process answers the question from the previous page: "why does California have 53 representatives?"  

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Reapportionment is tied to the census (let's take a moment to discuss the census).  The census is something that happens every 10 years (with the next one happening in 2020) when our federal government tries to count how many people reside in the United States.  Part of this process is also determining how many people reside in each state.  The census is extremely important and has recently been controversial (Links to an external site.).  It is important because we need to know how many people are in our state and in our country.  This number determines how many representatives a state will receive (since representation in the House is based on population) and the census is also important in determining how much aid from the federal government a state receives.  However, the census tends to be very bad at counting people who are homeless, people of color (Links to an external site.), and those that are undocumented (Links to an external site.) (the census attempts to count all people residing in the US regardless of citizenship status).  States that have large populations of these individuals (like California) might be undercounted, meaning that the official census does not accurately reflect how many people actually live here.  The Trump administration has been trying to insert a question on the census asking people about their citizenship status, which could serve to make undocumented people reluctant to respond.  So basically, the census is very important but it is also not done particularly well which has significant impacts on representation and funding for states. 

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And now back to our discussion of reapportionment...

Once we have established how many people live in a state, the decision then needs to be made on how many representatives that state should have.  If the population of a state has increased since the previous census, then that state might need more representatives (since representation is based on population).  However, if the population of a state decreased, then they might not need as many representatives as they had before. 

As mentioned before, there are 435 members of the House, so we can say that there are 435 positions/seats in the House.  Reapportionment is the process of allocating those 435 to states based on population. So every 10 years, some states might lose representatives/seats and some states may gain representatives/seats.  Population tends to shift, so some states grow and some state decrease in population.  We are not adding to the number 435, but rather reallocating those 435 seats to all the states. 

The video below is mandatory viewing and provides more explanation of reapportionment.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=69mFqlKDz0M

Redistricting

Redistricting also refers to elections for members of the House.  

Redistricting is the process of deciding what a district looks like, meaning, where the district lines are drawn.  Below is a picture of California's 13th district, which is represented by Barbara Lee.  The shaded area is the district.  Redistricting is the process for deciding what that district looks like.  

Redistricting is also tied to the census.  Once the determination is made of how many districts a state will receive, the decision then needs to be made to see what the districts should look like.  The overall goal is to have districts that are roughly the same size in terms of population.  You would not want one district that has 1,000 people living in it and another district that has 2,000,000 people living in it.  That would not be fair.

Population might shift within a state from one census to the next.  So to balance out the population within districts, redistricting happens every 10 years.  

This sounds fine right?  There's nothing inherently wrong with redistricting but...

It can sometimes lead to gerrymandering!  Gerrymandering is the process of designing a district to give a particular political party or a group of people an advantage.  Depending on how the district lines are drawn, could give a party an advantage.  For example, if the district lines were drawn around an area where there are known to be lots of Republicans, then it is very likely that a Republican will the election in that district.  As a side note, this kind of information is publicly available.  Meaning, politicians, political parties, and the public as a whole are able to know who is registered to vote and what their party is.  This information DOES NOT indicate who you voted for, that is confidential.  This information can then be used to determine how district lines are drawn.  

In many states, political parties themselves draw the district lines.  For example, in some states, whichever party has the majority in the state legislature is able to redraw the lines of all the districts in that state.  This can easily lead to those parties drawing districts in a way that makes it easier for someone from their party to win an election in that district.  

Is gerrymandering legal?  Well....that's complicated.  Technically, no, districts should not be drawn to favor a particular political party.  But, there has tended to not be much enforcement of this and it is not always obvious that gerrymandering has occurred.  However, there are some interesting cases that have come before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of gerrymandering.  

Below are some maps of districts that are clearly gerrymandered.  You can see that the district looks very odd, and that is because they were potentially designed to give one party an advantage.  

So what is going on in these pictures?  The red areas are all districts within different states.  A reason why these districts look so weird is that there is likely a large number of registered voters for a particular party in that district.  The lines were drawn around these areas to give that party an advantage and enable them win an election more easily.  

How sneaky!!

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Please watch the mandatory video below for a humorous take on gerrymandering.  Pay attention to what John Oliver says about gerrymandering, how it works, the different tactics used to give parties an advantage, and the consequences of it.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-4dIImaodQ

Representation in Congress

What does representation in Congress currently look like, in terms of demographics?  

In the House of Representatives: 

· There are 435 members of the House

· 328 are men; 106 are women

· Of the women, 91 are Democrats and 15 are Republican 

· 319 are white; 54 are African American; 42 are Hispanic/Latin American; 14 are Asian American/Pacific Islander; 4 are Native American

· Of the African American population, 53 are Democrats and 1 is Republican

· Of the Hispanic population, 35 are Democrats and 7 are Republican 

· Of the Asian American population, 13 are Democrats and 1 is Republican 

· Of the Native American population, 4 are Democrats and 4 are Republican 

· 26 are considered "millennials;" meaning were born after 1981

· 8 individuals identify as members of the LGBTQ community 

· These numbers are based in part on how the members of Congress identify themselves 

This qualifies as the most diverse House of Representatives in history.  The 2018 elections saw a huge wave of women winning elections throughout the country, particularly from the Democratic Party.  

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In the Senate: 

· 75 are men, 25 are women

· Of the female population, 17 are Democrats and 8 are Republican  

· 89 are white; 4 Hispanic/Latino; 3 are African American; 3 are Asian American; one identifies as multiracial

· There are two people of color in the Senate that are Republicans, Senators Ted Cruz of Texas and Marco Rubio of Florida, both of whom are Hispanic

· 2 individuals identify as members of the LGBTQ community 

This is the most number of women serving in the Senate in history.  

Why this Congress is considered to be diverse in comparison to previous years, there is obviously still some major discrepancies and the demographics in Congress are not similar to the demographics of the entire United States. 

 

The Law-Making Process

Please watch the video below for a discussion of how laws get made in Congress. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQHqhgADtCQ

The articles below are not required reading: 

Filibuster and Cloture  (Links to an external site.)

Famous Filibusters  (Links to an external site.)