Top of Form Lesson 3: Congress Expected Outcomes To understand the structure and process of the Legislative Branch, and to be familiar with both sides of the debate surrounding electronic voting and other controversies. Overview The US Constitution provides for "separation of powers" and "checks and balances," but it is still fair to claim that the Founding Fathers anticipated that Congress would be the branch that gave clearest voice to the diverse opinions and aspirations of voters. That's partly why its duties and responsibilities are included in Article I of the Constitution. The principal architect of the US Constitution, James Madison, made this clear in The Federalist Papers #51: "But it is not possible to give to each department an equal power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates." James Madison also feared excessive power in the Congress, which is why he and others settled on the proposal for a "bicameral" legislative branch: a House of Representatives and a Senate. For a bill to become a law, it would have to pass both houses of Congress, which is difficult. As James Madison continued: "The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them, by different modes of election and different principles of action, as little connected with each other as the nature of their common functions and their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still further precautions." While Madison and others were acutely aware of the potential tyranny of a single despot, king or even president, they were also cautious about the concept of "direct democracy," suspecting that Congress might become a vehicle for "tyranny of the majority." In such a tyranny, a majority would begin to restrict the rights of individuals and minorities. A Joint Session of Congress As James Madison wrote in The Federalist #10: “A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief of faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority, and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” He saw direct democracy as a danger to individual rights and advocated a representative democracy (also called a republic), in order to protect what he viewed as individual liberty from majority rule, or from the effects of such inequality within society. "The tyranny of the Legislature is really the danger most to be feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a more distant period." -Thomas Jefferson Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, also raised the problem of an overly-strong le ...

1. Top of Form
Lesson 3: Congress
Expected Outcomes
To understand the structure and process of the Legislative
Branch, and to be familiar with both sides of the debate
surrounding electronic voting and other controversies.
Overview
The US Constitution provides for "separation of powers" and
"checks and balances," but it is still fair to claim that the
Founding Fathers anticipated that Congress would be the branch
that gave clearest voice to the diverse opinions and aspirations
of voters.
That's partly why its duties and responsibilities are included in
Article I of the Constitution. The principal architect of the US
Constitution, James Madison, made this clear in The Federalist
Papers #51:
"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal
power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative
authority necessarily predominates."
James Madison also feared excessive power in the Congress,
which is why he and others settled on the proposal for a
"bicameral" legislative branch: a House of Representatives and
a Senate. For a bill to become a law, it would have to pass both
houses of Congress, which is difficult.
As James Madison continued:
"The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature
into different branches; and to render them, by different modes
of election and different principles of action, as little connected
with each other as the nature of their common functions and
their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even

2. be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still
further precautions."
While Madison and others were acutely aware of the potential
tyranny of a single despot, king or even president, they were
also cautious about the concept of "direct democracy,"
suspecting that Congress might become a vehicle for "tyranny
of the majority." In such a tyranny, a majority would begin to
restrict the rights of individuals and minorities.
A Joint Session of Congress
As James Madison wrote in The Federalist #10:
“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief of
faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority,
and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the
weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been
found incompatible with personal security or the rights of
property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as
they have been violent in their deaths.”
He saw direct democracy as a danger to individual rights and
advocated a representative democracy (also called a republic),
in order to protect what he viewed as individual liberty from
majority rule, or from the effects of such inequality within
society.
"The tyranny of the Legislature is really the danger most to be
feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The
tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a
more distant period."
-Thomas Jefferson
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, also raised
the problem of an overly-strong legislature in the 1840s:
"The legislature is, of all political institutions, the one which is
most easily swayed by the wishes of the majority. The
Americans determined that the members of the legislature
should be elected by the people immediately, and for a very
brief term, in order to subject them, not only to the general
convictions, but even to the daily passion, of their constituents.
The members of both houses are taken from the same class in

3. society, and are nominated in the same manner; so that the
modifications of the legislative bodies are almost as rapid and
quite as irresistible as those of a single assembly. It is to a
legislature thus constituted that almost all the authority of the
government has been entrusted.
But whilst the law increased the strength of those authorities
which of themselves were strong, it enfeebled more and more
those which were naturally weak. It deprived the representatives
of the executive of all stability and independence, and by
subjecting them completely to the caprices of the legislature; it
robbed them of the slender influence which the nature of a
democratic government might have allowed them to retain. In
several States the judicial power was also submitted to the
elective discretion of the majority, and in all of them its
existence was made to depend on the pleasure of the legislative
authority, since the representatives were empowered annually to
regulate the stipend of the judges."
The US Congress is "bicameral," as mentioned above, meaning
it has two chambers. The upper chamber is the Senate, and it is
more powerful because it has the final authority on the budget,
foreign treaties and other matters. Today, each of the 50 states
has two senators who serve renewable terms of 6 years. In a
sense, this arrangement gives the smaller states extraordinary
and disproportionate power in the Senate. Wyoming, with fewer
than one million people, has the same number of senators as
California, with over 38 million people.
The lower chamber is the House of Representatives. Each of the
50 states has a different number of representatives, depending
upon their relative population, and this is determined in the
national census conducted every 10 years. There are 435
representatives who serve renewable terms of 2 years, with
California having the most, while small states like Vermont or
Wyoming have just one.
Congress is especially relevant today because of the
polarization of the American public – of its apparent division
into conservative and liberal voting blocs. While some scholars

4. downplay this division, partisan politics and the culture wars
have figured prominently in the campaigns and elections from
1994 onward. The presidential election of 2000 was the closest
ever, and issues of transparency and fairness arose in that
election.
For these reasons, issues of electronic voting and redistricting
have become more important in Congress. A small difference in
the shape or size of a legislative district at the state level can
change the outcome of national politics – as can, for some
critics, whether or not a district employs electronic voting
machines. Some of these controversies are addressed below. It
is important to point out that Congress is normally held in low
regard by American popular opinion and today many if not most
people hold negative opinions about Congress.
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a
member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain
Scope and Limits of Legislative Power
What Congress is supposed to do – and what it is not supposed
to do – is spelled out in Article I of the US Constitution.
Article I, section 8, provides a clear enumeration of the duties
and responsibilities of Congress.
Article I. Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties,
imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the
common defense and general welfare of the United States; but
all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the
United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the
several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws
on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin,

5. and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities
and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing
for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to
their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the
high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make
rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to
that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and
naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of
the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia,
and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the
service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively,
the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the
militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over
such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by
cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress,
become the seat of the government of the United States, and to
exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent
of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the
erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other
needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other
powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the
United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

6. The "necessary and proper clause" mentioned at the end of end
of Section 8 keeps Congress occupied; passing new legislation
that is theoretically both "necessary" and "proper" to fulfill its
duties. How is all this "work" accomplished?
How a Bill Becomes Law
Introduction of Bills. Bills can begin in either the House or the
Senate. Different versions of a bill can begin in both chambers
concurrently.
· Bills can only be introduced by members of Congress.
· Many bills originate in the Executive Branch and are
introduced by a congressional sponsor.
· New bills are numbered and sent to the appropriate committee.
Committee Action. The bill comes under its most intense
scrutiny while in committee, and most bills die in committee.
· The bill is considered either by the full committee or a
subcommittee
· The committee may order a "clean bill," with a new number, to
be introduced.
Floor Action. Next, the bill appears before the entire House or
Senate. The two chambers have different procedures for floor
debate.
House:
· The House Rules Committee regulates debate for each bill,
issuing the "rule" for the bill.
· Members can speak on a bill for a set period of time, as
specified in the "rule."
· To speed debate on some bills, the House meets as the
Committee of the Whole, which has different rules for floor
debate. The Committee of the Whole can amend a bill, but
cannot pass it.
Senate:
· Senate debate is unlimited. However, today, only the
indication that a senator is willing to hold an unlimited debate
is enough to prevent a bill from receiving an up-or-down vote
(no actual time on the Senate floor). This is known as a
filibuster.

7. · A filibuster may be closed by unanimous consent (which is
very unlikely), or by invoking "cloture," which requires a three-
fifths vote of Senators present. If all 100 Senators are present,
then 60 votes are required to invoke cloture.
· Successful filibusters effectively kills a bill. Today, almost
every bill in the Senate requires 60 votes to end a filibuster so
the bill can receive an up-or-down floor vote.
Second Chamber. Once one chamber has voted to pass a bill, the
other chamber may:
· Pass it with the language intact.
· Refer it to a committee for scrutiny or alteration.
· Reject the entire bill, informing the other chamber of its
actions, or
· Ignore the bill, while working on its own version of the
legislation.
Conference. When the two chambers pass differing versions of
similar legislation, the bill goes to a conference committee to
reconcile the differences. A conference committee is convened
as necessary. Its members consist of equal members from both
political parties. Once the conference committee has crafted a
compromise bill, both the House and Senate need to pass it
again as it is (with no further changes) before it is sent to the
president for signature.
The President. The Speaker of the House and the President of
the Senate both sign the approved bill and send it to the
president, who then has four options.
· If the president signs and dates the bill, it becomes law.
· If Congress is in session, and the president does not sign the
bill within 10 days, the bill becomes law without his signature.
· The president may "veto" the bill. The bill then goes back to
Congress for a veto override vote. In order to override the
president's veto, there must be a 2/3 vote in the House and a 2/3
vote in the Senate. (A 2/3 vote by Congress, overall, is not
sufficient.
· If Congress adjourns within 10 days of giving the bill to the

8. president, and he does not sign it, the bill dies. This is called a
"pocket veto."
Due to the high volume and complexity of legislation, Congress
divides its tasks among approximately 250 committees and sub-
committees. The House and Senate each have their own
committee system, which are similar. The list below offers a
sense of how Congress divides its responsibilities into various
spheres of activity.
SENATE:
HOUSE:
Standing Committees
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Appropriations
Armed Services
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
Budget
Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Energy and Natural Resources
Environment and Public Works
Finance
Foreign Relations
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Judiciary
Rules and Administration
Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Veterans Affairs
Special, Select, and Other Committees
Indian Affairs
Select Committee on Ethics
Select Committee on Intelligence
Special Committee on Aging
Joint Committees
Joint Committee on Printing
Joint Committee on Taxation
Joint Committee on the Library

9. Joint Economic Committee
Standing Committees
Agriculture
Appropriations
Armed Services
Budget
Economic
Education
Energy and Commerce
Government Reform
Homeland Security
House Administration
International Relations
Judiciary
Resources
Rules
Science
Small Business
Standards of Official Conduct
Transportation and Infrastructure
Veterans' Affairs
Ways and Means
Special, Select, and Other Committees
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to
Hurricane Katrina
Joint Committees
Joint Committee on Printing
Joint Committee on Taxation
As with many organizations Congress has developed its own
terminology over the years, some of it similar to legislative
bodies around the world.
Congressional Glossary of Terms
Amendment - A proposal to change the language of a bill, can
be offered in Committee or on the Floor.

10. Bill - A legislative proposal introduced by a member of
Congress. Bills are designated as HR (House of
Representatives) or S (Senate) according to the body in which
they are introduced, and assigned numbers according to the
order in which they are introduced. Most bills are public bills,
dealing with general issues. Private bills deal with individual
claims against the government, such as immigration cases and
land disputes.
Budget Committees - A committee in each chamber that
coordinates spending legislation and formulates the overall
congressional budget.
Cloture - The procedure by which a filibuster can be ended in
the Senate. Cloture requires the signatures of 16 Senators and
the votes of three- fifths of the Senate (60 Senators).
Concurrent Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a
simple majority in the House and Senate but is not sent to the
President for approval.
Conference Committee - A special committee formed to
reconcile differences between differing versions of a bill passed
by the Senate and House. Conference committee members, or
conferees, are appointed from the bill's sponsoring committees
in each chamber.
Filibuster - A time-delaying tactic associated only with the
Senate and used by a minority in an effort to delay, modify or
defeat a bill or amendment that probably would pass if voted on
directly. The most common method is to take advantage of the
Senate's rules permitting unlimited debate.
Hearing - House and Senate Committee session in which
testimony regarding legislation is taken from interested parties.

11. Joint Committee - A committee composed of both House and
Senate members.
Joint Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a simple
majority in the House and Senate and sent to the President for
approval to have the force of law.
Line Item Veto Act - Gave the President authority to cancel
discretionary spending, items of new direct spending, and
limited tax benefits, which may only be overridden by a two-
thirds vote in Congress. Ruled unconstitutional in 1996.
Majority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative
strategist for the party in control of either the House or the
Senate.
Majority Whip - The assistant majority leader in the House or
Senate.
Minority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative
strategist for the minority party in either the House or Senate.
Minority Whip - The assistant minority leader in either House
or Senate.
Omnibus Bill - A bill containing several separate but related
items. Usually used for must-pass issues such as the federal
budget. The key for this type of bill is reconciliation, meaning
it must receive a floor vote in both chambers of Congress (ie, no
Senate filibuster).
Override a Veto - A procedure that Congress may enact when
the president refuses to sign a bill into law. Requires a two-
thirds vote in each chamber. If this vote occurs, the bill then
becomes law over the president's objections.
Quorum - The required minimum number of members present

12. for the House or Senate to conduct official business (51 in the
Senate, 218 in the House). Both chambers usually assume a
quorum is present even if it is not.
Reconciliation - A rule applied by the leaders of Congress to a
bill that must be passed, such as the federal budget. This rule
limits debate in both chambers. This is important in that the
Senate filibuster cannot be implemented for this bill (usually
applied to an omnibus bill).
Rider - An amendment, usually not germane, which its sponsor
hopes to get through more easily by including it in other
legislation.
Rule - The instructions on the time and substance of debate on a
House bill, which are attached to the bill when reported out to
the floor by the House Rules Committee
To learn more about Congress and the US Government, please
reference Thomas (ie, Library of Congress).
Of all the procedures mentioned above, the "filibuster" is one of
the most dramatic. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) set a record in 1957
by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and
18 minutes, although the bill ultimately passed. Thurmond
broke the previous record of 22 hours and 26 minutes set by
Wayne Morse (I-OR) in 1953.
Controversies Regarding the Legislative Branch
In the past several decades, several interesting controversies
have surfaced which address Congress. Some of these
controversies ebb and flow; that is, they appear to recede only
to resurface a few years later. This section examines several
debates relevant to Congress: term limits, electronic voting and
pork-barrel spending.
Term Limits
In the 1980s and 1990s, an increasing number of Americans
began to question their system of legislative representation.

13. Under the US Constitution, representatives both at the state and
federal level reserved the right to keep running (usually
winning).
Why is this bad? Many citizens felt that long-term politicians,
or incumbents, enjoy too much of an advantage over
challengers, who are often younger and hold fresher ideas.
Would not the legislative process be enhanced, they asked, with
a more rapid turnover of representatives?
Many critics of the present system also argued that established
politicians tend to develop political machines that become
corrupt. They learn all the tricks of the trade, and indeed the
largest "pork-barrel" projects tend to be sponsored by seasoned
politicians.
Simultaneously, social spending and entitlements continue to
rise. Many advocates of term limits hold their views for fiscal
reasons, thinking that entrenched politicians are simply too
eager to spend. Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who
traveled widely in the US in the 1840s, and who wrote
Democracy in America, said something interesting.
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress
discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"
-Alexis de Tocqueville
For reasons of fiscal restraint and concern over corruption,
residents of several states attempted to restrict the time that
their representatives can serve in Congress. The concept is
called "term limits."
Some states, like Arkansas, even passed legislation for term
limits. After much debate in the media and in the courtroom of
public opinion, the entire issue went to the US Supreme Court
in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995). The Court ruled
against term limits, at least for state-elected representatives at
the federal level in Washington, D.C.
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion:
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995)
… Term limits, like any other qualification for office,
unquestionably restrict the ability of voters to vote for whom

14. they wish. On the other hand, such limits may provide for the
infusion of fresh ideas and new perspectives, and may decrease
the likelihood that representatives will lose touch with their
constituents. It is not our province to resolve this longstanding
debate.
We are, however, firmly convinced that allowing the several
States to adopt term limits for congressional service would
effect a fundamental change in the constitutional framework.
Any such change must come not by legislation adopted either by
Congress or by an individual State, but rather--as have other
important changes in the electoral process [n.50] --through the
Amendment procedures set forth in Article V…
In the absence of a properly passed constitutional amendment,
allowing individual States to craft their own qualifications for
Congress would thus erode the structure envisioned by the
Framers, a structure that was designed, in the words of the
Preamble to our Constitution, to form a "more perfect Union."
The dissent was written by Justice Clarence Thomas:
Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of
the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the
candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The
Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the
Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or
the people.
Because the majority fundamentally misunderstands the notion
of "reserved" powers, I start with some first principles.
Contrary to the majority's suggestion, the people of the States
need not point to any affirmative grant of power in the
Constitution in order to prescribe qualifications for their
representatives in Congress or to authorize their elected state
legislators to do so.
Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all
power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the
principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about
something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The
ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of

15. the people of each individual State, not the consent of the
undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole…
For now, the issue of term limits in Washington DC has been
more or less settled, but the motivations and interests advancing
term limits remain.
Electronic Voting
Technology often improves out lives, but does it improve our
electoral system? Electronic voting is increasingly being used in
all kinds of elections, including those for Congress. Moreover,
if national standards or restrictions emerge surrounding this
issue, it will more likely than not emerge within Congress.
Electronic voting is a hotly-debated question. There are two
articles below. The first supports the concept of electronic
voting, claiming that it is fair, efficient and economical. The
second article is radically opposed to e-voting, claiming that it
gives corporations and dominant political parties a "backup
option" to steal an election.
The Case for Electronic VotingExcerpt from Wired News, the
Case for Electronic Voting
Farhad Manjoo
Townsend, who is the registrar of voters in Riverside County,
decided to spend $14 million earlier this year to make Riverside
an all-electronic voting county.
At the time, she said, not everyone was thrilled about the idea.
Some of her colleagues thought the touch-screen voting
machines might be too complicated for voters, and that the
whole upgrade might be too expensive. Nobody is questioning
Townsend's decision anymore.
The deployment of electronic voting equipment in Riverside
was a long-time in coming. "The idea came two years ago, after
California's 1998 gubernatorial primary," Townsend said.
That year, Riverside spent $1.4 million to print a ballot for each
of the county's registered voters -- about 600,000. Only about
half of the voters showed up at the polls, and "we had to throw
out the rest of the ballots," Townsend said.

16. A more significant problem than the cost, though, was the error-
rate of the county's punch-card system. "In Florida now, they're
talking about the problems with 'overvoting'" -- people voting
for more than one candidate -- "but this isn't a new thing. I'd see
voters all the time making that mistake," she said. Townsend
thought there had to be a better way. And she found it, she said,
in Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment's AVC Edge touch-screen
system.
The new voting machines were first tested in a few small city
races, and Townsend said the touch system had two things going
for it: It was easy to use, and it eliminated errors.
The public liked it too, Townsend said. "For the city races, we
had a 99 percent approval rating of the new systems. The
comments were mostly, 'We've finally stepped into the 21st
century,' and 'Why has it taken so long for this?'"
"The election business is slow-moving," said Paul Terwilliger,
an engineer at Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment. But now,
after Florida, "electronic voting is certainly going to explode,"
he said.
And a lot of firms, both traditional and startup, are jockeying
into position for a possible financial windfall.
One such traditional company that has started producing
electronic systems is Hart InterCivic, which this year tested its
eSlate voting system in a few counties across the country.
The eSlate resembles an "an oversized palm-pilot, about the size
of a legal-sized sheet of paper," said Michelle Shafer, a
spokeswoman for Hart. Unlike the Riverside County systems,
the eSlates don't use a touch-screen. "You vote by turning a
wheel on the bottom, and you make a selection by pressing a
button," she said…
Everyone who tried the system in Arizona liked it, and more
than 80 percent said they would prefer to vote using such
electronic terminals...
Many conservative libertarians and progressive populists,
however, take issue with electronic voting, seeing a sinister
aspect in the new technology.

17. Electronic Voting is Fraudulent. V Citizens, excerpts.
Secrecy in government has taken a new turn. Elections are now
secret from voters. Black-box voting employs touch-screen
machines that often produce no printed receipt. Without a paper
trail, a legitimate recount is impossible. It's a virtual vote. And
that's the point, actually.
Electronic voting is "secret" because citizens curious about
how, exactly, electronic votes are counted are barred from
analyzing protected software. It's private property. And when
states and counties demand access to the software codes the e-
voting companies simply pull up stakes and move to other
markets. The companies involved in black-box voting include
Diebold, Election Systems & Software, and Sequoia, and the
large investors in these companies include defense contractors
Northrup-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin.
Many Americans, particularly in Ohio, remain suspicious that
Ohio forced 800,000 voters to cast "virtual votes," giving them
no other option. (Bush won that deciding state by just 150,000
votes.)
Controversy has always surrounded e-voting because it is
widely viewed as vulnerable to fraud, hackers, malfunctions and
power outages. Perhaps its most unique feature, however, is that
e-voting is "virtual" in the full sense of the word: votes hover in
cyberspace, not as matter but as energy, quarks akimbo. Then,
sometime later, a private company decides to retrieve the votes
from a private server - all of the votes, some of the votes, or
none of the votes. You will never know.
A question arises: Why can't Halliburton get a no-bid contract
to run paperless elections on secret software, off of private
servers, and then be in charge of actually counting the votes?
Because another Party-backed company, Diebold, already got it.
Elections in America are increasingly privatized, paperless and
virtual. Instead of marching, citizen-turned-consumers will
register their political will, like drones, on a touch-screen pad.
Eventually, the issue of electronic voting will probably reach
either the US Supreme Court, and the issue will be settled one

18. way or another. Clearly, the debate over electronic voting is just
beginning.
Citizen complaints about the lack of personal and professional
ethics in Congress date to the 18th century – and these
complaints cut across party lines - but the 21st century
witnessed new kinds of grievances. For example, the Congress
of 2000 – 2006 was commonly criticized for its frequent use of
"doublethink" to describe the distortion of language for the
purpose of political propaganda. Six examples stand out.
· "The National Uniformity for Food Act" actually prohibited
states like California from maintaining strict health standards,
and it replaced these strong state standards with weaker federal
standards. This was a favor to the food industry.
· "Thee Clear Skies Act" actually allowed for more pollution
and contamination than the legislation it was designed to
replace.
· "The Healthy Forests Initiative" was actually written by the
timber industry and allowed for more logging on public lands. It
weakened environmental regulations and limited the judicial
review of abuses in the industry.
· "The Data Quality Act" prevented the federal government from
disseminating warnings about products if industries could
produce, with its own self-generated "science," countervailing
data.
· "Project Bioshield Act" prevents victims of toxic vaccinations
from suing pharmaceutical companies, even if the vaccine
maker engaged in fraud at the outset. This was a favor to the
pharmaceutical industries.
· "Middle Class Tax Cuts" actually provided very modest tax
reductions for the middle class. It was principally designed to
substantially reduce the taxes of the wealthy, which is a strategy
favored by many economists as a method to stimulate the
economy. (The problem is the name of the legislation).
Not too much changed in 2006, however. The new Congress did
not eliminate pork-barrel spending or corporate welfare. In
2007, Congress loaded up an "emergency" budget with more

19. than $20 billion in pork for members' districts. This included
money for peanut storage in Georgia; spinach growers in
California; and office space for the lawmakers themselves.
Campaign Finance Reform
For some Americans, Congress has unfortunately become "the
best Congress money can buy." Numerous citizen-action groups,
with a handful of congressmen, are advancing a new
proposition, namely that a candidate for office be prohibited
from accepting private money and that campaigns be financed
from public money. Other similar proposals include more
accountability, more transparency and a restriction on lobbyists.
One moderate proposal actually became law: the Bipartisan
Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-
Feingold Act). This regulates the financing of political
campaigns, and it was designed to address the increased role of
in campaign financing of "soft money" (donations made directly
to political parties by corporations, unions, or well-healed
individuals).
Campaign-finance reform would theoretically restore
accountability, honesty and civic-mindedness to Congress.
Representatives and Senators would no longer be "bought and
paid for." However, there are constitutional issues involved.
Does campaign-finance reform restrict an individual's First
Amendment right of freedom of association and freedom of
political expression? After all, donating to a campaign has long
been recognized as a form of political expression, and any ban
on this has constitutional implications.
Actually, this debate reached the US Supreme Court, and it was
brought by the California State Democratic Party and the
National Rifle Association, who argued that the legislation was
an unconstitutional infringement on their First Amendment
rights. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of almost all of the
McCain-Feingold Act in McConnell v. Federal Election
Commission (2003).
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)
Question

20. 1. Does the "soft money" ban of the Campaign Finance Reform
Act of 2002 exceed Congress's authority to regulate elections
under Article 1, Section 4 of the United States Constitution
and/or violate the First Amendment's protection of the freedom
to speak?
2. Do regulations of the source, content, or timing of political
advertising in the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002
violate the First Amendment's free speech clause?
Conclusion
With a few exceptions, the Court answered "no" to both
questions in a 5-to-4 decision written by Justices Sandra Day
O'Connor and John Paul Stevens. Because the regulations dealt
mostly with soft-money contributions that were used to register
voters and increase attendance at the polls, not with campaign
expenditures (which are more explicitly a statement of political
values and therefore deserve more protection), the Court held
that the restriction on free speech was minimal. It then found
that the restriction was justified by the government's legitimate
interest in preventing "both the actual corruption threatened by
large financial contributions and... the appearance of
corruption" that might result from those contributions.
In response to challenges that the law was too broad and
unnecessarily regulated conduct that had not been shown to
cause corruption (such as advertisements paid for by
corporations or unions), the Court found that such regulation
was necessary to prevent the groups from circumventing the
law. Justices O'Connor and Stevens wrote that "money, like
water, will always find an outlet" and that the government was
therefore justified in taking steps to prevent schemes developed
to get around the contribution limits.
The Court also rejected the argument that Congress had
exceeded its authority to regulate elections under Article I,
Section 4 of the Constitution. The Court found that the law only
affected state elections in which federal candidates were
involved and also that it did not prevent states from creating
separate election laws for state and local elections.

21. http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1674/
In summary, a very limited and modest version of campaign-
finance reform has been found to be constitutional, but it
remains to be seen if further restrictions on political donations
would pass the same test. In fact, it did not. In 2010, the US
Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v FEC that campaign
contributions were protected under the 1st Amendment right to
free speech.
Pork Barrel Spending and Corruption
"Pork" is used to describe Congressional spending that
represents thinly-disguised favors and kickbacks for friends and
supporters. Each year, Congress must approve a new budget to
finance the workings of the U.S. government, and each year
many congressmen add items to that budget which are of
questionable merit.
Consider, for example, the famous "Bridge to Nowhere." The
bridge in Alaska would connect the town of Ketchikan
(population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina
(population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million,
by way of three separate earmarks in a highway bill. At present,
a ferry service runs to the island, but some in the town complain
about its wait (15 to 30 minutes) and fee ($6 per car).
Congressional Staff
Each member of Congress is authorized to have a staff of
professioinals working for them paid for by taxpayers. These
staffers are usually young people or old-timiers with lots of
experience. Each has a specific area of expertise that they keep
abeast of for their member of Congress. As such, it is not likely
that any bill, omnibus or otherwise, would come up for a vote,
and the member of Congress not have a staffer who knows
everything that is in it. So, where members of Congress come
and go, some staffers persist for the long term ensuring
corporate memery for Congress. Many famous people were once
congressional staffers, to include Lawrence O'Donnell, George

22. Tenet, and Chris Matthews.
Conclusion
Congress is the branch of government closest to the people.
With eery Representative facing an election in two-year
intervals, it is the first branch of government to feel the impact
of popular will.
Paradoxically, Americans often hold Congress in low regard but
then, in times of crisis, turn to Congress as a solution to solve
pressing problems.
Top of Form
THE NATIONIn Wartime, Who Has the Power?
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: March 4, 2007
WASHINGTON
The Constitution seems relatively clear. The president is the
commander in chief, and he has the power to deploy troops and
to direct military strategy. Congress has the power to declare
war and can use its control over the purse to end a war. But it
has no say over how the war is actually prosecuted.
That poses a problem for Congress, as it debates the course of
the Iraq war. Democratic proposals to check President Bush’s
increasing unpopular war range from Senator Barack Obama’s

23. “phased redeployment” of all combat troops out of Iraq by
March 3, 2008, to Representative John Murtha’s attempts to
impose specific standards for the training and equipping of
troops.
Regardless of how these proposals fare politically, they raise
serious constitutional questions that could affect not only the
conduct of the Iraq war, but also the balance of power between
Congress and the president in wartime.
Legal scholars — both critics and supporters of the Iraq war —
say that if Congress tries to manage the deployment and
withdrawal of troops without cutting funds, the
president’s powers as commander in chief would be encroached,
perhaps leading to a constitutional confrontation of historic
proportions.
“If there were to be a binding resolution that said troops had to
go from 120,000 to 80,000 by April 15, Congress would be, in
my view, transgressing on the conduct of a military campaign,”
says Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor at New York
University. “Congress can’t tell the president to charge up the
east side of the hill rather than the west, which is the definition
of the president’s military authority.”
So how, exactly, can Congress assert power over the war,
beyond its ability simply to pull the plug on its financing?
History suggests that Congress has found ways of checking the
president in the past without encroaching on his power as
commander in chief. And, history suggests, as well, that neither
side is that eager for a constitutional showdown.
There is little dispute that Congress could, if it had the political
will, end the war in Iraq tomorrow by using its power over
appropriations to cut off funds to the troops. “Congress could
easily check the president,” says W. Taylor Reveley III, the
dean of William and Mary School of Law and author of “War

24. Powers of the President and Congress.”
“If Iraq continues to go badly or if it looks like the president
might actually use force in Iran, I can easily see Congress
passing something like the Cambodian or Vietnam spending
cutoffs, which would force the setting of a timetable for
withdrawal that was pretty brisk,” he said.
If Congress used its appropriations power in this way, even the
most vigorous defenders of executive power agree, President
Bush would have to acquiesce. “He would have to comply, and
he would comply,” says John Yoo, the University of California
at Berkeley law professor who, as a Bush administration
official, defended the president’s authority to act unilaterally.
According to Professor Yoo, Congress could immediately cut
funds, or could order a phased withdrawal by authorizing a
fixed amount of money each month for specified numbers of
troops.
“The idea that the funding tool is too blunt is a view held by
people who have never worked in Congress,” he says. “It can be
a scalpel as well as a baseball bat.”
The problem is not that Congress lacks the constitutional power
to cut off funds, but that it may lack the political will to do so.
“I think it’s inconceivable that Congress will cut off
appropriations, because no one wants to leave people on the
field without support,” says Michael Gerhardt of the University
of North Carolina Law School.
Congress, however, has other cudgels. During the War of 1812,
Federalist critics of President James Madison forced the
resignation of his secretary of war, and, decades later, the
House passed a resolution censuring President James Polk for
unconstitutionally beginning a war with Mexico.

25. During the Civil War, Congressional Republicans wanted
Lincoln to fire Gen. George B. McClellan and prosecute the war
more aggressively. But they never tried to control actual troop
movements. Instead, Congress tried to shame the Union generals
into fighting by hauling them repeatedly before Congressional
committees.
“It bordered on harassment, and Lincoln resisted some of the
excesses, but even then, Congress never tried to issue orders
about the deployment of troops,” says Professor Issacharoff.
Congress, of course, could assert itself in similar ways today,
according to Professor Gerhardt. “Congress is entitled to have
oversight hearings to see how well things are going, and to
figure out where we should go from here,” he says.
Changes in technology also make it easier for Congress to
micromanage military decisions if it chooses to do so. “In the
19th century, simply to send a command and find out what
happened in the battle took weeks,” says Professor Issacharoff.
“So neither Congress nor the president could micromanage.
Now you can have battlefield commanders in a speakerphone in
the well of Congress — you could have 535 generals shouting
instructions.”
Congress would also be perfectly competent to examine civil
liberties questions, like the restoration of habeas corpus for
detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. It could pass resolutions
opposing the war effort over Republican opposition, as
Democrats have proposed to do. It could demand compliance
with international norms about how the war is conducted.
But let’s say Congress passed a binding resolution that reduced
troop levels without actually cutting off funds. What then?
“What’s likely to happen is that Congress will assert its power,
and the executive will resist through delay, redeployment of

26. troops elsewhere or simply disregarding Congress,” Professor
Issacharoff says. “It will never be presented to a court, because
when both branches are involved in disputes about war and
claim overlapping powers, the courts tend to back down.”
Dean Reveley agrees. “These disputes about the powers of the
president and Congress in wartime are waged with almost
theological passion and conviction and the Supreme Court
rarely intervenes, which is why war powers are still so murky,”
he says. “Every time we’ve gotten involved in an unpopular
war, which has been all our wars except the two World Wars,
there has been an enormous amount of bickering between the
president and Congress when it didn’t come out the way we
wanted. Sometimes presidents have acted, Congress said ‘Don’t
do that,’ and the president acceded, as in Vietnam. But mostly
Congress has stood on the sidelines and complained.”
In other words, a constitutional crisis may not be the inevitable
outcome.
“I think this will be resolved politically, as it has been in the
past, and either the president or Congress will back down,”
Professor Issacharoff says. “My sense is that it’s more likely to
be Congress, because nobody wants to assume responsibility for
managing a disaster.”
Even if President Bush wins a constitutional confrontation,
Congress may react by asserting its powers against future
presidents. “Congress will be much more careful in the future
about authorizing force without restrictions on presidential
power,” says Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. “Every
action on each side tends to provoke a counterreaction, which is
probably what James Madison wanted.”

27. Bottom of Form
Bottom of Form
_id1476:_id1484
viewsectionStude
typeEditor
false
_id1476:_id1487
viewsectionStude
typeEditor
false
Top of Form
Lesson 3: Congress
Expected Outcomes
To understand the structure and process of the Legislative
Branch, and to be familiar with both sides of the debate
surrounding electronic voting and other controversies.
Overview
The US Constitution provides for "separation of powers" and
"checks and balances," but it is still fair to claim that the

28. Founding Fathers anticipated that Congress would be the branch
that gave clearest voice to the diverse opinions and aspirations
of voters.
That's partly why its duties and responsibilities are included in
Article I of the Constitution. The principal architect of the US
Constitution, James Madison, made this clear in The Federalist
Papers #51:
"But it is not possible to give to each department an equal
power of self-defense. In republican government, the legislative
authority necessarily predominates."
James Madison also feared excessive power in the Congress,
which is why he and others settled on the proposal for a
"bicameral" legislative branch: a House of Representatives and
a Senate. For a bill to become a law, it would have to pass both
houses of Congress, which is difficult.
As James Madison continued:
"The remedy for this inconveniency is to divide the legislature
into different branches; and to render them, by different modes
of election and different principles of action, as little connected
with each other as the nature of their common functions and
their common dependence on the society will admit. It may even
be necessary to guard against dangerous encroachments by still
further precautions."
While Madison and others were acutely aware of the potential
tyranny of a single despot, king or even president, they were
also cautious about the concept of "direct democracy,"
suspecting that Congress might become a vehicle for "tyranny
of the majority." In such a tyranny, a majority would begin to
restrict the rights of individuals and minorities.
A Joint Session of Congress
As James Madison wrote in The Federalist #10:
“A pure democracy can admit no cure for the mischief of
faction. A common passion or interest will be felt by a majority,
and there is nothing to check the inducements to sacrifice the
weaker party. Hence it is, that democracies have ever been
found incompatible with personal security or the rights of

29. property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as
they have been violent in their deaths.”
He saw direct democracy as a danger to individual rights and
advocated a representative democracy (also called a republic),
in order to protect what he viewed as individual liberty from
majority rule, or from the effects of such inequality within
society.
"The tyranny of the Legislature is really the danger most to be
feared, and will continue to be so for many years to come. The
tyranny of the executive power will come in its turn, but at a
more distant period."
-Thomas Jefferson
Alexis de Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, also raised
the problem of an overly-strong legislature in the 1840s:
"The legislature is, of all political institutions, the one which is
most easily swayed by the wishes of the majority. The
Americans determined that the members of the legislature
should be elected by the people immediately, and for a very
brief term, in order to subject them, not only to the general
convictions, but even to the daily passion, of their constituents.
The members of both houses are taken from the same class in
society, and are nominated in the same manner; so that the
modifications of the legislative bodies are almost as rapid and
quite as irresistible as those of a single assembly. It is to a
legislature thus constituted that almost all the authority of the
government has been entrusted.
But whilst the law increased the strength of those authorities
which of themselves were strong, it enfeebled more and more
those which were naturally weak. It deprived the representatives
of the executive of all stability and independence, and by
subjecting them completely to the caprices of the legislature; it
robbed them of the slender influence which the nature of a
democratic government might have allowed them to retain. In
several States the judicial power was also submitted to the
elective discretion of the majority, and in all of them its
existence was made to depend on the pleasure of the legislative

30. authority, since the representatives were empowered annually to
regulate the stipend of the judges."
The US Congress is "bicameral," as mentioned above, meaning
it has two chambers. The upper chamber is the Senate, and it is
more powerful because it has the final authority on the budget,
foreign treaties and other matters. Today, each of the 50 states
has two senators who serve renewable terms of 6 years. In a
sense, this arrangement gives the smaller states extraordinary
and disproportionate power in the Senate. Wyoming, with fewer
than one million people, has the same number of senators as
California, with over 38 million people.
The lower chamber is the House of Representatives. Each of the
50 states has a different number of representatives, depending
upon their relative population, and this is determined in the
national census conducted every 10 years. There are 435
representatives who serve renewable terms of 2 years, with
California having the most, while small states like Vermont or
Wyoming have just one.
Congress is especially relevant today because of the
polarization of the American public – of its apparent division
into conservative and liberal voting blocs. While some scholars
downplay this division, partisan politics and the culture wars
have figured prominently in the campaigns and elections from
1994 onward. The presidential election of 2000 was the closest
ever, and issues of transparency and fairness arose in that
election.
For these reasons, issues of electronic voting and redistricting
have become more important in Congress. A small difference in
the shape or size of a legislative district at the state level can
change the outcome of national politics – as can, for some
critics, whether or not a district employs electronic voting
machines. Some of these controversies are addressed below. It
is important to point out that Congress is normally held in low
regard by American popular opinion and today many if not most
people hold negative opinions about Congress.
"Reader, suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a

31. member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
-Mark Twain
Scope and Limits of Legislative Power
What Congress is supposed to do – and what it is not supposed
to do – is spelled out in Article I of the US Constitution.
Article I, section 8, provides a clear enumeration of the duties
and responsibilities of Congress.
Article I. Section 8.
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties,
imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the
common defense and general welfare of the United States; but
all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the
United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the
several states, and with the Indian tribes;
To establish a uniform rule of naturalization, and uniform laws
on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin,
and fix the standard of weights and measures;
To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities
and current coin of the United States;
To establish post offices and post roads;
To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing
for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to
their respective writings and discoveries;
To constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court;
To define and punish piracies and felonies committed on the
high seas, and offenses against the law of nations;
To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make
rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to
that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;

32. To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and
naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of
the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia,
and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the
service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively,
the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the
militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over
such District (not exceeding ten miles square) as may, by
cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress,
become the seat of the government of the United States, and to
exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent
of the legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the
erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other
needful buildings;--And
To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for
carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other
powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the
United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
The "necessary and proper clause" mentioned at the end of end
of Section 8 keeps Congress occupied; passing new legislation
that is theoretically both "necessary" and "proper" to fulfill its
duties. How is all this "work" accomplished?
How a Bill Becomes Law
Introduction of Bills. Bills can begin in either the House or the
Senate. Different versions of a bill can begin in both chambers
concurrently.
· Bills can only be introduced by members of Congress.
· Many bills originate in the Executive Branch and are
introduced by a congressional sponsor.
· New bills are numbered and sent to the appropriate committee.
Committee Action. The bill comes under its most intense
scrutiny while in committee, and most bills die in committee.
· The bill is considered either by the full committee or a

33. subcommittee
· The committee may order a "clean bill," with a new number, to
be introduced.
Floor Action. Next, the bill appears before the entire House or
Senate. The two chambers have different procedures for floor
debate.
House:
· The House Rules Committee regulates debate for each bill,
issuing the "rule" for the bill.
· Members can speak on a bill for a set period of time, as
specified in the "rule."
· To speed debate on some bills, the House meets as the
Committee of the Whole, which has different rules for floor
debate. The Committee of the Whole can amend a bill, but
cannot pass it.
Senate:
· Senate debate is unlimited. However, today, only the
indication that a senator is willing to hold an unlimited debate
is enough to prevent a bill from receiving an up-or-down vote
(no actual time on the Senate floor). This is known as a
filibuster.
· A filibuster may be closed by unanimous consent (which is
very unlikely), or by invoking "cloture," which requires a three-
fifths vote of Senators present. If all 100 Senators are present,
then 60 votes are required to invoke cloture.
· Successful filibusters effectively kills a bill. Today, almost
every bill in the Senate requires 60 votes to end a filibuster so
the bill can receive an up-or-down floor vote.
Second Chamber. Once one chamber has voted to pass a bill, the
other chamber may:
· Pass it with the language intact.
· Refer it to a committee for scrutiny or alteration.
· Reject the entire bill, informing the other chamber of its
actions, or
· Ignore the bill, while working on its own version of the
legislation.

34. Conference. When the two chambers pass differing versions of
similar legislation, the bill goes to a conference committee to
reconcile the differences. A conference committee is convened
as necessary. Its members consist of equal members from both
political parties. Once the conference committee has crafted a
compromise bill, both the House and Senate need to pass it
again as it is (with no further changes) before it is sent to the
president for signature.
The President. The Speaker of the House and the President of
the Senate both sign the approved bill and send it to the
president, who then has four options.
· If the president signs and dates the bill, it becomes law.
· If Congress is in session, and the president does not sign the
bill within 10 days, the bill becomes law without his signature.
· The president may "veto" the bill. The bill then goes back to
Congress for a veto override vote. In order to override the
president's veto, there must be a 2/3 vote in the House and a 2/3
vote in the Senate. (A 2/3 vote by Congress, overall, is not
sufficient.
· If Congress adjourns within 10 days of giving the bill to the
president, and he does not sign it, the bill dies. This is called a
"pocket veto."
Due to the high volume and complexity of legislation, Congress
divides its tasks among approximately 250 committees and sub-
committees. The House and Senate each have their own
committee system, which are similar. The list below offers a
sense of how Congress divides its responsibilities into various
spheres of activity.
SENATE:
HOUSE:
Standing Committees
Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Appropriations
Armed Services
Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs

35. Budget
Commerce, Science, and Transportation
Energy and Natural Resources
Environment and Public Works
Finance
Foreign Relations
Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Judiciary
Rules and Administration
Small Business and Entrepreneurship
Veterans Affairs
Special, Select, and Other Committees
Indian Affairs
Select Committee on Ethics
Select Committee on Intelligence
Special Committee on Aging
Joint Committees
Joint Committee on Printing
Joint Committee on Taxation
Joint Committee on the Library
Joint Economic Committee
Standing Committees
Agriculture
Appropriations
Armed Services
Budget
Economic
Education
Energy and Commerce
Government Reform
Homeland Security
House Administration
International Relations
Judiciary
Resources

36. Rules
Science
Small Business
Standards of Official Conduct
Transportation and Infrastructure
Veterans' Affairs
Ways and Means
Special, Select, and Other Committees
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and Response to
Hurricane Katrina
Joint Committees
Joint Committee on Printing
Joint Committee on Taxation
As with many organizations Congress has developed its own
terminology over the years, some of it similar to legislative
bodies around the world.
Congressional Glossary of Terms
Amendment - A proposal to change the language of a bill, can
be offered in Committee or on the Floor.
Bill - A legislative proposal introduced by a member of
Congress. Bills are designated as HR (House of
Representatives) or S (Senate) according to the body in which
they are introduced, and assigned numbers according to the
order in which they are introduced. Most bills are public bills,
dealing with general issues. Private bills deal with individual
claims against the government, such as immigration cases and
land disputes.
Budget Committees - A committee in each chamber that
coordinates spending legislation and formulates the overall
congressional budget.
Cloture - The procedure by which a filibuster can be ended in
the Senate. Cloture requires the signatures of 16 Senators and

37. the votes of three- fifths of the Senate (60 Senators).
Concurrent Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a
simple majority in the House and Senate but is not sent to the
President for approval.
Conference Committee - A special committee formed to
reconcile differences between differing versions of a bill passed
by the Senate and House. Conference committee members, or
conferees, are appointed from the bill's sponsoring committees
in each chamber.
Filibuster - A time-delaying tactic associated only with the
Senate and used by a minority in an effort to delay, modify or
defeat a bill or amendment that probably would pass if voted on
directly. The most common method is to take advantage of the
Senate's rules permitting unlimited debate.
Hearing - House and Senate Committee session in which
testimony regarding legislation is taken from interested parties.
Joint Committee - A committee composed of both House and
Senate members.
Joint Resolution - A statement of opinion approved by a simple
majority in the House and Senate and sent to the President for
approval to have the force of law.
Line Item Veto Act - Gave the President authority to cancel
discretionary spending, items of new direct spending, and
limited tax benefits, which may only be overridden by a two-
thirds vote in Congress. Ruled unconstitutional in 1996.
Majority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative
strategist for the party in control of either the House or the
Senate.

38. Majority Whip - The assistant majority leader in the House or
Senate.
Minority Leader - The leading spokesperson and legislative
strategist for the minority party in either the House or Senate.
Minority Whip - The assistant minority leader in either House
or Senate.
Omnibus Bill - A bill containing several separate but related
items. Usually used for must-pass issues such as the federal
budget. The key for this type of bill is reconciliation, meaning
it must receive a floor vote in both chambers of Congress (ie, no
Senate filibuster).
Override a Veto - A procedure that Congress may enact when
the president refuses to sign a bill into law. Requires a two-
thirds vote in each chamber. If this vote occurs, the bill then
becomes law over the president's objections.
Quorum - The required minimum number of members present
for the House or Senate to conduct official business (51 in the
Senate, 218 in the House). Both chambers usually assume a
quorum is present even if it is not.
Reconciliation - A rule applied by the leaders of Congress to a
bill that must be passed, such as the federal budget. This rule
limits debate in both chambers. This is important in that the
Senate filibuster cannot be implemented for this bill (usually
applied to an omnibus bill).
Rider - An amendment, usually not germane, which its sponsor
hopes to get through more easily by including it in other
legislation.
Rule - The instructions on the time and substance of debate on a

39. House bill, which are attached to the bill when reported out to
the floor by the House Rules Committee
To learn more about Congress and the US Government, please
reference Thomas (ie, Library of Congress).
Of all the procedures mentioned above, the "filibuster" is one of
the most dramatic. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) set a record in 1957
by filibustering the Civil Rights Act of 1957 for 24 hours and
18 minutes, although the bill ultimately passed. Thurmond
broke the previous record of 22 hours and 26 minutes set by
Wayne Morse (I-OR) in 1953.
Controversies Regarding the Legislative Branch
In the past several decades, several interesting controversies
have surfaced which address Congress. Some of these
controversies ebb and flow; that is, they appear to recede only
to resurface a few years later. This section examines several
debates relevant to Congress: term limits, electronic voting and
pork-barrel spending.
Term Limits
In the 1980s and 1990s, an increasing number of Americans
began to question their system of legislative representation.
Under the US Constitution, representatives both at the state and
federal level reserved the right to keep running (usually
winning).
Why is this bad? Many citizens felt that long-term politicians,
or incumbents, enjoy too much of an advantage over
challengers, who are often younger and hold fresher ideas.
Would not the legislative process be enhanced, they asked, with
a more rapid turnover of representatives?
Many critics of the present system also argued that established
politicians tend to develop political machines that become
corrupt. They learn all the tricks of the trade, and indeed the
largest "pork-barrel" projects tend to be sponsored by seasoned
politicians.
Simultaneously, social spending and entitlements continue to
rise. Many advocates of term limits hold their views for fiscal

40. reasons, thinking that entrenched politicians are simply too
eager to spend. Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who
traveled widely in the US in the 1840s, and who wrote
Democracy in America, said something interesting.
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress
discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money"
-Alexis de Tocqueville
For reasons of fiscal restraint and concern over corruption,
residents of several states attempted to restrict the time that
their representatives can serve in Congress. The concept is
called "term limits."
Some states, like Arkansas, even passed legislation for term
limits. After much debate in the media and in the courtroom of
public opinion, the entire issue went to the US Supreme Court
in U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995). The Court ruled
against term limits, at least for state-elected representatives at
the federal level in Washington, D.C.
Justice Stevens delivered the opinion:
U.S. Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton (1995)
… Term limits, like any other qualification for office,
unquestionably restrict the ability of voters to vote for whom
they wish. On the other hand, such limits may provide for the
infusion of fresh ideas and new perspectives, and may decrease
the likelihood that representatives will lose touch with their
constituents. It is not our province to resolve this longstanding
debate.
We are, however, firmly convinced that allowing the several
States to adopt term limits for congressional service would
effect a fundamental change in the constitutional framework.
Any such change must come not by legislation adopted either by
Congress or by an individual State, but rather--as have other
important changes in the electoral process [n.50] --through the
Amendment procedures set forth in Article V…
In the absence of a properly passed constitutional amendment,
allowing individual States to craft their own qualifications for
Congress would thus erode the structure envisioned by the

41. Framers, a structure that was designed, in the words of the
Preamble to our Constitution, to form a "more perfect Union."
The dissent was written by Justice Clarence Thomas:
Nothing in the Constitution deprives the people of each State of
the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the
candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The
Constitution is simply silent on this question. And where the
Constitution is silent, it raises no bar to action by the States or
the people.
Because the majority fundamentally misunderstands the notion
of "reserved" powers, I start with some first principles.
Contrary to the majority's suggestion, the people of the States
need not point to any affirmative grant of power in the
Constitution in order to prescribe qualifications for their
representatives in Congress or to authorize their elected state
legislators to do so.
Our system of government rests on one overriding principle: all
power stems from the consent of the people. To phrase the
principle in this way, however, is to be imprecise about
something important to the notion of "reserved" powers. The
ultimate source of the Constitution's authority is the consent of
the people of each individual State, not the consent of the
undifferentiated people of the Nation as a whole…
For now, the issue of term limits in Washington DC has been
more or less settled, but the motivations and interests advancing
term limits remain.
Electronic Voting
Technology often improves out lives, but does it improve our
electoral system? Electronic voting is increasingly being used in
all kinds of elections, including those for Congress. Moreover,
if national standards or restrictions emerge surrounding this
issue, it will more likely than not emerge within Congress.
Electronic voting is a hotly-debated question. There are two
articles below. The first supports the concept of electronic
voting, claiming that it is fair, efficient and economical. The

42. second article is radically opposed to e-voting, claiming that it
gives corporations and dominant political parties a "backup
option" to steal an election.
The Case for Electronic VotingExcerpt from Wired News, the
Case for Electronic Voting
Farhad Manjoo
Townsend, who is the registrar of voters in Riverside County,
decided to spend $14 million earlier this year to make Riverside
an all-electronic voting county.
At the time, she said, not everyone was thrilled about the idea.
Some of her colleagues thought the touch-screen voting
machines might be too complicated for voters, and that the
whole upgrade might be too expensive. Nobody is questioning
Townsend's decision anymore.
The deployment of electronic voting equipment in Riverside
was a long-time in coming. "The idea came two years ago, after
California's 1998 gubernatorial primary," Townsend said.
That year, Riverside spent $1.4 million to print a ballot for each
of the county's registered voters -- about 600,000. Only about
half of the voters showed up at the polls, and "we had to throw
out the rest of the ballots," Townsend said.
A more significant problem than the cost, though, was the error-
rate of the county's punch-card system. "In Florida now, they're
talking about the problems with 'overvoting'" -- people voting
for more than one candidate -- "but this isn't a new thing. I'd see
voters all the time making that mistake," she said. Townsend
thought there had to be a better way. And she found it, she said,
in Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment's AVC Edge touch-screen
system.
The new voting machines were first tested in a few small city
races, and Townsend said the touch system had two things going
for it: It was easy to use, and it eliminated errors.
The public liked it too, Townsend said. "For the city races, we
had a 99 percent approval rating of the new systems. The
comments were mostly, 'We've finally stepped into the 21st
century,' and 'Why has it taken so long for this?'"

43. "The election business is slow-moving," said Paul Terwilliger,
an engineer at Sequoia Pacific Voting Equipment. But now,
after Florida, "electronic voting is certainly going to explode,"
he said.
And a lot of firms, both traditional and startup, are jockeying
into position for a possible financial windfall.
One such traditional company that has started producing
electronic systems is Hart InterCivic, which this year tested its
eSlate voting system in a few counties across the country.
The eSlate resembles an "an oversized palm-pilot, about the size
of a legal-sized sheet of paper," said Michelle Shafer, a
spokeswoman for Hart. Unlike the Riverside County systems,
the eSlates don't use a touch-screen. "You vote by turning a
wheel on the bottom, and you make a selection by pressing a
button," she said…
Everyone who tried the system in Arizona liked it, and more
than 80 percent said they would prefer to vote using such
electronic terminals...
Many conservative libertarians and progressive populists,
however, take issue with electronic voting, seeing a sinister
aspect in the new technology.
Electronic Voting is Fraudulent. V Citizens, excerpts.
Secrecy in government has taken a new turn. Elections are now
secret from voters. Black-box voting employs touch-screen
machines that often produce no printed receipt. Without a paper
trail, a legitimate recount is impossible. It's a virtual vote. And
that's the point, actually.
Electronic voting is "secret" because citizens curious about
how, exactly, electronic votes are counted are barred from
analyzing protected software. It's private property. And when
states and counties demand access to the software codes the e-
voting companies simply pull up stakes and move to other
markets. The companies involved in black-box voting include
Diebold, Election Systems & Software, and Sequoia, and the
large investors in these companies include defense contractors
Northrup-Grumman and Lockheed-Martin.

44. Many Americans, particularly in Ohio, remain suspicious that
Ohio forced 800,000 voters to cast "virtual votes," giving them
no other option. (Bush won that deciding state by just 150,000
votes.)
Controversy has always surrounded e-voting because it is
widely viewed as vulnerable to fraud, hackers, malfunctions and
power outages. Perhaps its most unique feature, however, is that
e-voting is "virtual" in the full sense of the word: votes hover in
cyberspace, not as matter but as energy, quarks akimbo. Then,
sometime later, a private company decides to retrieve the votes
from a private server - all of the votes, some of the votes, or
none of the votes. You will never know.
A question arises: Why can't Halliburton get a no-bid contract
to run paperless elections on secret software, off of private
servers, and then be in charge of actually counting the votes?
Because another Party-backed company, Diebold, already got it.
Elections in America are increasingly privatized, paperless and
virtual. Instead of marching, citizen-turned-consumers will
register their political will, like drones, on a touch-screen pad.
Eventually, the issue of electronic voting will probably reach
either the US Supreme Court, and the issue will be settled one
way or another. Clearly, the debate over electronic voting is just
beginning.
Citizen complaints about the lack of personal and professional
ethics in Congress date to the 18th century – and these
complaints cut across party lines - but the 21st century
witnessed new kinds of grievances. For example, the Congress
of 2000 – 2006 was commonly criticized for its frequent use of
"doublethink" to describe the distortion of language for the
purpose of political propaganda. Six examples stand out.
· "The National Uniformity for Food Act" actually prohibited
states like California from maintaining strict health standards,
and it replaced these strong state standards with weaker federal
standards. This was a favor to the food industry.
· "Thee Clear Skies Act" actually allowed for more pollution
and contamination than the legislation it was designed to

45. replace.
· "The Healthy Forests Initiative" was actually written by the
timber industry and allowed for more logging on public lands. It
weakened environmental regulations and limited the judicial
review of abuses in the industry.
· "The Data Quality Act" prevented the federal government from
disseminating warnings about products if industries could
produce, with its own self-generated "science," countervailing
data.
· "Project Bioshield Act" prevents victims of toxic vaccinations
from suing pharmaceutical companies, even if the vaccine
maker engaged in fraud at the outset. This was a favor to the
pharmaceutical industries.
· "Middle Class Tax Cuts" actually provided very modest tax
reductions for the middle class. It was principally designed to
substantially reduce the taxes of the wealthy, which is a strategy
favored by many economists as a method to stimulate the
economy. (The problem is the name of the legislation).
Not too much changed in 2006, however. The new Congress did
not eliminate pork-barrel spending or corporate welfare. In
2007, Congress loaded up an "emergency" budget with more
than $20 billion in pork for members' districts. This included
money for peanut storage in Georgia; spinach growers in
California; and office space for the lawmakers themselves.
Campaign Finance Reform
For some Americans, Congress has unfortunately become "the
best Congress money can buy." Numerous citizen-action groups,
with a handful of congressmen, are advancing a new
proposition, namely that a candidate for office be prohibited
from accepting private money and that campaigns be financed
from public money. Other similar proposals include more
accountability, more transparency and a restriction on lobbyists.
One moderate proposal actually became law: the Bipartisan
Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the McCain-
Feingold Act). This regulates the financing of political
campaigns, and it was designed to address the increased role of

46. in campaign financing of "soft money" (donations made directly
to political parties by corporations, unions, or well-healed
individuals).
Campaign-finance reform would theoretically restore
accountability, honesty and civic-mindedness to Congress.
Representatives and Senators would no longer be "bought and
paid for." However, there are constitutional issues involved.
Does campaign-finance reform restrict an individual's First
Amendment right of freedom of association and freedom of
political expression? After all, donating to a campaign has long
been recognized as a form of political expression, and any ban
on this has constitutional implications.
Actually, this debate reached the US Supreme Court, and it was
brought by the California State Democratic Party and the
National Rifle Association, who argued that the legislation was
an unconstitutional infringement on their First Amendment
rights. The US Supreme Court ruled in favor of almost all of the
McCain-Feingold Act in McConnell v. Federal Election
Commission (2003).
McConnell v. Federal Election Commission (2003)
Question
1. Does the "soft money" ban of the Campaign Finance Reform
Act of 2002 exceed Congress's authority to regulate elections
under Article 1, Section 4 of the United States Constitution
and/or violate the First Amendment's protection of the freedom
to speak?
2. Do regulations of the source, content, or timing of political
advertising in the Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2002
violate the First Amendment's free speech clause?
Conclusion
With a few exceptions, the Court answered "no" to both
questions in a 5-to-4 decision written by Justices Sandra Day
O'Connor and John Paul Stevens. Because the regulations dealt
mostly with soft-money contributions that were used to register
voters and increase attendance at the polls, not with campaign
expenditures (which are more explicitly a statement of political

47. values and therefore deserve more protection), the Court held
that the restriction on free speech was minimal. It then found
that the restriction was justified by the government's legitimate
interest in preventing "both the actual corruption threatened by
large financial contributions and... the appearance of
corruption" that might result from those contributions.
In response to challenges that the law was too broad and
unnecessarily regulated conduct that had not been shown to
cause corruption (such as advertisements paid for by
corporations or unions), the Court found that such regulation
was necessary to prevent the groups from circumventing the
law. Justices O'Connor and Stevens wrote that "money, like
water, will always find an outlet" and that the government was
therefore justified in taking steps to prevent schemes developed
to get around the contribution limits.
The Court also rejected the argument that Congress had
exceeded its authority to regulate elections under Article I,
Section 4 of the Constitution. The Court found that the law only
affected state elections in which federal candidates were
involved and also that it did not prevent states from creating
separate election laws for state and local elections.
http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1674/
In summary, a very limited and modest version of campaign-
finance reform has been found to be constitutional, but it
remains to be seen if further restrictions on political donations
would pass the same test. In fact, it did not. In 2010, the US
Supreme Court ruled in Citizens United v FEC that campaign
contributions were protected under the 1st Amendment right to
free speech.
Pork Barrel Spending and Corruption
"Pork" is used to describe Congressional spending that
represents thinly-disguised favors and kickbacks for friends and
supporters. Each year, Congress must approve a new budget to
finance the workings of the U.S. government, and each year
many congressmen add items to that budget which are of
questionable merit.

48. Consider, for example, the famous "Bridge to Nowhere." The
bridge in Alaska would connect the town of Ketchikan
(population 8,900) with its airport on the Island of Gravina
(population 50) at a cost to federal taxpayers of $320 million,
by way of three separate earmarks in a highway bill. At present,
a ferry service runs to the island, but some in the town complain
about its wait (15 to 30 minutes) and fee ($6 per car).
Congressional Staff
Each member of Congress is authorized to have a staff of
professioinals working for them paid for by taxpayers. These
staffers are usually young people or old-timiers with lots of
experience. Each has a specific area of expertise that they keep
abeast of for their member of Congress. As such, it is not likely
that any bill, omnibus or otherwise, would come up for a vote,
and the member of Congress not have a staffer who knows
everything that is in it. So, where members of Congress come
and go, some staffers persist for the long term ensuring
corporate memery for Congress. Many famous people were once
congressional staffers, to include Lawrence O'Donnell, George
Tenet, and Chris Matthews.
Conclusion
Congress is the branch of government closest to the people.
With eery Representative facing an election in two-year
intervals, it is the first branch of government to feel the impact
of popular will.
Paradoxically, Americans often hold Congress in low regard but
then, in times of crisis, turn to Congress as a solution to solve
pressing problems.

49. Top of Form
THE NATIONIn Wartime, Who Has the Power?
By JEFFREY ROSEN
Published: March 4, 2007
WASHINGTON
The Constitution seems relatively clear. The president is the
commander in chief, and he has the power to deploy troops and
to direct military strategy. Congress has the power to declare
war and can use its control over the purse to end a war. But it
has no say over how the war is actually prosecuted.
That poses a problem for Congress, as it debates the course of
the Iraq war. Democratic proposals to check President Bush’s
increasing unpopular war range from Senator Barack Obama’s
“phased redeployment” of all combat troops out of Iraq by
March 3, 2008, to Representative John Murtha’s attempts to
impose specific standards for the training and equipping of
troops.
Regardless of how these proposals fare politically, they raise
serious constitutional questions that could affect not only the
conduct of the Iraq war, but also the balance of power between
Congress and the president in wartime.
Legal scholars — both critics and supporters of the Iraq war —
say that if Congress tries to manage the deployment and
withdrawal of troops without cutting funds, the
president’s powers as commander in chief would be encroached,
perhaps leading to a constitutional confrontation of historic
proportions.

50. “If there were to be a binding resolution that said troops had to
go from 120,000 to 80,000 by April 15, Congress would be, in
my view, transgressing on the conduct of a military campaign,”
says Samuel Issacharoff, a law professor at New York
University. “Congress can’t tell the president to charge up the
east side of the hill rather than the west, which is the definition
of the president’s military authority.”
So how, exactly, can Congress assert power over the war,
beyond its ability simply to pull the plug on its financing?
History suggests that Congress has found ways of checking the
president in the past without encroaching on his power as
commander in chief. And, history suggests, as well, that neither
side is that eager for a constitutional showdown.
There is little dispute that Congress could, if it had the political
will, end the war in Iraq tomorrow by using its power over
appropriations to cut off funds to the troops. “Congress could
easily check the president,” says W. Taylor Reveley III, the
dean of William and Mary School of Law and author of “War
Powers of the President and Congress.”
“If Iraq continues to go badly or if it looks like the president
might actually use force in Iran, I can easily see Congress
passing something like the Cambodian or Vietnam spending
cutoffs, which would force the setting of a timetable for
withdrawal that was pretty brisk,” he said.
If Congress used its appropriations power in this way, even the
most vigorous defenders of executive power agree, President
Bush would have to acquiesce. “He would have to comply, and
he would comply,” says John Yoo, the University of California
at Berkeley law professor who, as a Bush administration
official, defended the president’s authority to act unilaterally.

51. According to Professor Yoo, Congress could immediately cut
funds, or could order a phased withdrawal by authorizing a
fixed amount of money each month for specified numbers of
troops.
“The idea that the funding tool is too blunt is a view held by
people who have never worked in Congress,” he says. “It can be
a scalpel as well as a baseball bat.”
The problem is not that Congress lacks the constitutional power
to cut off funds, but that it may lack the political will to do so.
“I think it’s inconceivable that Congress will cut off
appropriations, because no one wants to leave people on the
field without support,” says Michael Gerhardt of the University
of North Carolina Law School.
Congress, however, has other cudgels. During the War of 1812,
Federalist critics of President James Madison forced the
resignation of his secretary of war, and, decades later, the
House passed a resolution censuring President James Polk for
unconstitutionally beginning a war with Mexico.
During the Civil War, Congressional Republicans wanted
Lincoln to fire Gen. George B. McClellan and prosecute the war
more aggressively. But they never tried to control actual troop
movements. Instead, Congress tried to shame the Union generals
into fighting by hauling them repeatedly before Congressional
committees.
“It bordered on harassment, and Lincoln resisted some of the
excesses, but even then, Congress never tried to issue orders
about the deployment of troops,” says Professor Issacharoff.
Congress, of course, could assert itself in similar ways today,
according to Professor Gerhardt. “Congress is entitled to have
oversight hearings to see how well things are going, and to

52. figure out where we should go from here,” he says.
Changes in technology also make it easier for Congress to
micromanage military decisions if it chooses to do so. “In the
19th century, simply to send a command and find out what
happened in the battle took weeks,” says Professor Issacharoff.
“So neither Congress nor the president could micromanage.
Now you can have battlefield commanders in a speakerphone in
the well of Congress — you could have 535 generals shouting
instructions.”
Congress would also be perfectly competent to examine civil
liberties questions, like the restoration of habeas corpus for
detainees held at Guantánamo Bay. It could pass resolutions
opposing the war effort over Republican opposition, as
Democrats have proposed to do. It could demand compliance
with international norms about how the war is conducted.
But let’s say Congress passed a binding resolution that reduced
troop levels without actually cutting off funds. What then?
“What’s likely to happen is that Congress will assert its power,
and the executive will resist through delay, redeployment of
troops elsewhere or simply disregarding Congress,” Professor
Issacharoff says. “It will never be presented to a court, because
when both branches are involved in disputes about war and
claim overlapping powers, the courts tend to back down.”
Dean Reveley agrees. “These disputes about the powers of the
president and Congress in wartime are waged with almost
theological passion and conviction and the Supreme Court
rarely intervenes, which is why war powers are still so murky,”
he says. “Every time we’ve gotten involved in an unpopular
war, which has been all our wars except the two World Wars,
there has been an enormous amount of bickering between the
president and Congress when it didn’t come out the way we
wanted. Sometimes presidents have acted, Congress said ‘Don’t
do that,’ and the president acceded, as in Vietnam. But mostly

53. Congress has stood on the sidelines and complained.”
In other words, a constitutional crisis may not be the inevitable
outcome.
“I think this will be resolved politically, as it has been in the
past, and either the president or Congress will back down,”
Professor Issacharoff says. “My sense is that it’s more likely to
be Congress, because nobody wants to assume responsibility for
managing a disaster.”
Even if President Bush wins a constitutional confrontation,
Congress may react by asserting its powers against future
presidents. “Congress will be much more careful in the future
about authorizing force without restrictions on presidential
power,” says Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. “Every
action on each side tends to provoke a counterreaction, which is
probably what James Madison wanted.”
Bottom of Form
Bottom of Form
_id1476:_id1484
viewsectionStude
typeEditor
false

54. _id1476:_id1487
viewsectionStude
typeEditor
false
Lesson 4: The Presidency
“Being a President is like riding a tiger. A man has to keep on
riding or be swallowed."
-President Harry Truman
Expected Outcomes
To appreciate the process of becoming president; to understand
the powers and constraints of the office; and to comprehend the
logic and criticisms behind executive privilege and unitary
executive theory.
Overview
Ironically, the United States was founded upon the rejection of
one-person rule (the King of England), and yet Americans often
expect so much of presidents, holding them accountable for the
nation’s economic performance - when a president’s ability to
influence the economy is extremely limited.
The presidency of the United States combines various domestic
and international responsibilities, and in the age of nuclear
weapons, the Oval Office of the White House office has been
described as the most powerful office in the world, both in
reality and symbolically. The president acts as the leader of the
party, a chief legislator, chief diplomat, a Commander-in-Chief,
and a crisis manager. In modern times, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt best reflects the heightened profile of the presidency,
as he led the nation through both the Great Depression and
World War II.
It is possible to view the entire history of the United States
through the window of the White House. The kinds of
presidents the U.S. has experienced, with their personal and

55. partisan orientations, have often reflected upon the country as a
whole. Some presidential events – such as the assassination of
John F. Kennedy – became a part of every Americans’
individual life story, and everyone who remembers that day also
remembers exactly where he or she was when they learned of
the assassination in Dallas.
It is useful to divide up American history into dominant themes,
and to group presidents together who faced similar
circumstances. It is important to know the succession of
presidents from 1961 onwards, as well as their party affiliations
(D) for Democratic and (R) for Republican.
Early Republic and the Formation of National Government
1789-1829
George Washington
John Adams
Thomas Jefferson
James Madison
James Monroe
John Quincy Adams
Jacksonian Democracy and Westward Expansion 1829-1853
Andrew Jackson
Martin Van Buren
William Harrison
John Tyler
James Polk
Zachary Taylor
Millard Fillmore
Sectional Conflict and Reconstruction 1853-1881
Franklin Pierce
James Buchanan
Abraham Lincoln
Andrew Johnson
Ulysses Grant
Rutherford Hayes
The Gilded Age, Industrialization and Urbanization 1881-1897

56. James Garfield
Chester Arthur
Grover Cleveland
Benjamin Harrison
Grover Cleveland
The Progressive Era and Becoming a World Power 1897-1921
William McKinley
Theodore Roosevelt
William Taft
Woodrow Wilson
The Great Depression & World Conflict 1921-1961
Warren Harding
Calvin Coolidge
Herbert Hoover
Franklin Roosevelt
Harry Truman
Dwight Eisenhower
Social Change & Soviet Relations 1961-1989
John Kennedy (D)
Lyndon Johnson (D)
Richard Nixon (R)
Gerald Ford (R)
Jimmy Carter (D)
Ronald Reagan (R)
Economic Globalization and Domestic Political Polarization
1989-
George H. W. Bush (R)
Bill Clinton (D)
George W. Bush (R)
Barack Obama (D)
While it is possible to categorize presidents in this way, it is
also conceivable that there are political cycles of alternation
between Democratic and Republican presidents. Political
scientist Arthur Schlesinger, for example, proposed that there
are national cycles between conservatism (a preference for order
and tradition) and liberalism (a preference for change and

57. personal liberty). Schlesinger further claimed that conservatism
was about “private interest” and economic growth while
liberalism was about “public purpose” and social responsibility.
Presidents simply fit into these larger national movements. Most
(but not all) Republicans advance private interest; and most (but
not all) Democrats advance public purpose. This can be called
the “Schlesinger cycle.”
Another political scientist, James Barber, considered the
influence of a president’s personality on his performance in the
White House. Barber found repeating patterns of common
elements relating to character, worldview, style, approach to
dealing with power, and expectations.
Based on these findings, Barber concluded that presidents were
either “active” or “passive.” For example, John Kennedy and
Lyndon Johnson were highly active; Calvin Coolidge and
Ronald Reagan were highly passive. Interestingly enough,
passive presidents often did better in approval ratings.
Barber also analyzed the emotional attitudes of presidents
toward their work. Some presidents were “positive” and others
were “negative.” Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan, for example,
were presidents who enjoyed their work. FDR and Reagan left
office with rather high approval ratings and were treated
favorably by historians. However, Thomas Jefferson and
Richard Nixon had negative feelings towards the job, with more
mixed results.
Barber developed four repeating categories into which he was
able to place all presidents: those like FDR who actively
pursued their work and had positive feelings about their efforts
(active/positives); those like Nixon who actively pursued the
job but had negative feelings about it (active/negatives); those
like Reagan who were passive about the job but enjoyed it
(passive/positives); and, finally, those who followed the pattern
of Thomas Jefferson -- who both was passive and did not enjoy
the work (passive/negatives).
Interestingly, the category of presidents who proved

58. troublesome and unpopular under Barber's analysis is that of
those who turned out to be active/negative.
Barber placed Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, Lyndon
Johnson and Richard Nixon in this class of active/negatives.
Scholars taking up where Barber left off (Barber recently died)
have classified Pres. George W. Bush as active/negative,
perhaps one reason for the steady decline he experienced in his
approval ratings over his years in office. Still other political
scientists consider economic factors – such as the Stock Market
– as critical in determining the overall performance and
approval rating of a president. If true, a president’s personal
characteristics have little to do with overall approval ratings.
Clearly, the presidency is one of the most studied institutions in
American government, and generations of political scientists
have studied the presidency in order to better understand where
then country has been where it is, and where it is going.
It is vital to an understanding of the presidency to consider
written documents and first-hand texts from the presidents
themselves. Below, two documents have been selected that
attest to the power of the office: the first, by Andrew Jackson,
led to the tragedy of the forced removal of Native Americans
from their homelands; the second, by Abraham Lincoln, led to
the formal freedom of African-Americans, who had been held in
slavery.
Andrew Jackson's Seventh Annual Message to Congress,
Excerpt
December 7, 1835
On Indian Removal
The plan of removing the aboriginal people who yet remain
within the settled portions of the United States to the country
west of the Mississippi River approaches its consummation…
All preceding experiments for the improvement of the Indians
have failed. It seems now to be an established fact they cannot
live in contact with a civilized community and prosper. Ages of
fruitless endeavors have at length brought us to knowledge of
this principle of intercommunication with them… Many have