Legislative Branch

The function of the legislative branch is to make laws. The legislative branch is made up of representatives elected to Congress. Congress is comprised of two groups, called houses: the House of Representatives (the House) and the Senate.

Congress is the law-making body, and no federal taxes can be collected or money spent without the approval of both Houses.

Elections for both Houses are held (along with elections to other positions) in November each even-numbered year, when the whole House of Representatives is elected, to serve for only two years, while senators are elected in rotation for six years. Every two years, one third of the Senate stands for election. If a senator or representative dies or resigns, a special election may be held to fill the vacant place for the remainder of the term.

The Senate embodies the federal nature of the Constitution, with two senators from each state. Each state’s two senators are elected at separate elections, for example, one in November 1984 to serve for 1985-91, the other in 1986 to serve for 1987-93; and each senator is elected by and for a whole state, without geographical division.

The House of Representatives has a fixed number of seats (435), and each state has one seat for every 1/435 share that it has of the whole US population – in 1986, one seat for every 530,000 inhabitants, approximately. The number of representatives each state sends to the House depends upon the number of districts in each state. Each district chooses one representative. The number of districts in each state is determined by population. The most heavily populated states have more districts and, therefore, more representatives than the sparsely populated states.

Every ten years, after each census, states with fast-growing populations, like Texas and Florida, are given extra seats at the expense of those with slow growth like New York. Six states are small enough to have only one seat in the House; the others are divided into constituencies or ‘districts’, each of which is represented by the candidate who wins most votes at the elections.

The rules about fixed terms of office for President and Congress have prevented the type of instability that has been found at times in many European countries where the executive head of government resigns if defeated in the parliamentary assembly. They have also prevented the concentration of power that occurs in a parliamentary system based on two strongly disciplined parties such as that of Great Britain. But they have created conditions in which it may be difficult for any coherent policy at all to be followed, for example, when the President is a Democrat faced by a Republican majority in one House of Congress – or even in both Houses. And the two major parties are so complex in themselves that a Democratic President may have difficulty even with Democratic majorities in Congress, just because he has not adequate means of exercising discipline among the members of his own party.

Дата добавления: 2015-07-20