Text 19: us congress rules

The main task of each house of Congress is the same — to make laws. Because the House of Representatives and Senate differ in many ways, each chamber has organized itself to carry out its work of making the laws. These complex rules enable Congress to carry out its lawmaking duties.

Article I of the US Constitution says that each House may determine the rules of its proceedings. Thomas Jefferson compiled the first manual on the Senate rules when he was Vice President. He emphasized the importance of such rules.

House rules are generally aimed at defining the actions an individual representative can take. In the Senate, the rules are more flexible and designed to make certain all senators have maximum freedom to express their ideas. For example, the Senate usually allows unlimited debate on proposed legislation, whereas the House limits representatives to speaking for five minutes or less during a debate.

With fewer rules, the Senate has a more informal atmosphere. Senators may debate a proposal for weeks or even months. In contrast, the complex rules in the House require that legislation move quickly once it reaches the floor. House debates rarely last more than one day. Moreover, leaders of the House of Representatives have more power than leaders in the Senate. For example, the rules of the House allow its leaders to make key decisions about legislative work without consulting other House members.

Most of the work of Congress is carried out in Committees. Because the House is so large, representatives generally do not make a practice of expressing their positions on the floor, where they have only limited time to speak. In the committees, however, representatives have more influence, and they have the time to study and shape bills.

Text 20: lawmaking in the senate

Visitors going from the House of Representatives to the Senate are often startled by the difference. The Senate chamber is smaller and quieter than the House chamber. Usually only a few senators attend sessions. The Senate chamber has 100 desks — one for each senator — facing a raised platform where Senate leaders preside over sessions. The party leaders or their assistants stay in the Senate chamber at all times to keep the work moving and to look after their party's interests.

As in the House, any member of the Senate may introduce a bill. Procedures for moving bills through the Senate, however, are more informal than in the House. Senate leaders control the flow of bills to committees and to the floor for debate and vote. They do this by consulting closely with one another and with other senators.

Senate leaders also try to schedule sessions to fit the interests and needs of as many senators as possible. In contrast to the procedure in the House, individual senators have the power to disrupt work on legislation. As one former Senate leader declared, a senator, "if he wants to exercise power, can tie up the Senate for days, and if he allies himself with a few other Senators, he can tie up the Senate for weeks."

The Senate brings bills to the floor by unanimous consent, a motion by all members present to set aside formal rules and consider a bill. The procedure has not changed much through the years. In 1913 Massachusetts Senator Henry Lodge explained that the Senate conducted most of its business through unanimous-consent agreements. He emphasized that Senators depended on the principle of unanimous consent while discussing both large and generally contested measures, and all the small business of the Senate.