Transcription
Hey everybody, welcome back. This is the major section in all of AP Gov, so smash that like button so I can start dropping some knowledge. [Music]
Let's start with the Congressional committee system, which is where most of the work in Congress takes place. It'd be basically impossible to work on bills with all 100 or 435 members. So instead, there are a number of committees in the House and Senate devoted to different policy areas. The idea is that a smaller group of Representatives or Senators can work on the bills and also develop expertise in the topics of the Committees they serve on. The majority party always has more members on each committee, so they have a significant advantage as bills are moving through committees. The leader of each committee is called the committee chairperson, and they too are always from the majority party.
The law-making process begins the same way in both the House and the Senate: a member introduces a bill, it's given a number, and assigned to a standing committee, which is a permanent committee that works on legislation in a specific subject area, like the budget or agriculture. The House and Senate each have their own standing committees, and most bills never make it past this step. Committees markup, or edit and revise bills; they also hold hearings, listening to experts and lobbyists about the proposed bill and what it should or shouldn't say. If the bill ends up becoming a law, standing committees perform congressional oversight to ensure that the bill is being implemented as Congress intended.
There are three other types of committees as well. Joint committees include members from both the House and the Senate on the same committee. The most important type of joint committee is a conference committee, which is formed when the House and Senate passed different versions of the same bill. Since the bills aren't exactly the same, they can't be sent over to the President to be signed into law. So the conference committee, made up of both Representatives and Senators, attempts to make a single, compromised version of the bill. The last type of committee is a special or select committee, which is a temporary committee formed for a specific purpose, most often investigations—for example, looking into 9/11, or Benghazi, or January 6th, or something really urgent like steroids in baseball. Once the investigation is over, the committee is dissolved.
Next, let's shift gears to Congressional leadership. The Speaker of the House is the most powerful position in the House. The Speaker is chosen by a majority of the members of the House and therefore is always from the majority party, though sometimes those votes can be full of drama—just ask Speaker McCarthy. The Speaker presides over the House, promoting their party's legislation; they set the Congressional agenda, heavily influencing which bills are brought to the floor for a vote and when. In the Senate, technically the Vice President is President of the Senate, though their only real role is to cast votes when there's a tie. With this, and it's so evenly divided lately, we've seen Vice President Pence and Harris each cast a number of tie-breaking votes. The real leader of the Senate is the majority leader, who presides over the Senate, leads his party, and helps guide the rules and procedures to achieve his party's goals. There's also a minority leader in both the House and Senate, leading the opposition party. Following an election when the majority party switches, a lot of the times the minority leader becomes the majority leader, and vice versa. And both parties have whips whose job it is to ensure party loyalty among members and account votes ahead of time to make sure that their party will win important votes.
In the last video, I mentioned that the House was more formal and more rules-based than the Senate. Now let's get more specific, starting with the House. There's an extra step in the legislative process in the House: bills are sent to the House Rules Committee, which sets the rules for floor debate, such as establishing entitlement for representatives to speak and determining whether members will be allowed to propose amendments. Bills that can be amended are called open rule bills, and ones that can't be amended are called closed rule. By the way, when I mentioned the floor, I'm talking about debates and votes that include the entire House or the entire Senate. In addition to the time limits for debates, there's also a germaneness requirement that all speech must be relevant and on topic. Additionally, the House has discharge petitions, which are very rarely used but can force the bill out of committee to the House floor. Let's say that your bill that you wrote and you love is just sitting there in a standing committee getting ignored. If you can convince a majority of the whole House, it can be brought straight to the floor where it could then be debated and voted on. And if you haven't had enough of weird, made-up rules yet, the House can also form itself into a committee of the whole to speed up the legislative process. Basically, the entire House temporarily acts like a committee, and then it reforms itself as the House again to advance the bill quickly through the process. Yes, it's like the lamest magic trick ever.
Meanwhile, the Senate is anything goes, come as you are, talk for as long as you want about anything you want—no, I mean literally anything you want. Want to read Green Eggs and Ham? Go for it. Want to read the phone book? I mean, please don't, but sure, if you really want to. This opens the door for individual Senators to exercise a lot of influence over a bill. One way is through filibustering. A filibuster is a long speech to delay action or prevent a bill from being voted on. As long as they can continue speaking, they can hold the floor, and as long as they have the floor, then the bill can't be brought to a vote. Please understand that the purpose of this speech is not to convince people to vote the way you want them to. Most filibusters are by members of the minority party because they don't want the bill to be voted on, because if it is brought to a vote, they'll lose. While the filibuster is occurring, the Senate is basically held hostage and can't do anything else. If a group of Senators commits to the filibuster, they can literally talk until the session of Congress ends. So the Senate changed their rules a few decades ago, allowing for this silent filibuster, sometimes called double tracking. This is much easier: instead of actually filibustering, a Senator merely states his intention to filibuster, and the disputed bill is put to the side, and the Senate moves on to other business, but can't debate or vote on that bill. Maybe you see the problem now. Filibustering is super easy. In the past, Senators would only filibuster if they thought the bill was like earth-shatteringly bad, but now the filibuster basically anything they don't like because it's so easy. So the number of filibusters has unsurprisingly skyrocketed. Another similar tactic is that Senators can also issue holds, which prevent a bill from being discussed or voted upon until the Senator releases his hold. Recently, a Senator from Alabama put holds on a number of military appointments because he was displeased with the military policy regarding abortion.
Filibusters and holds can be forcibly ended though, through a cloture motion. For most legislation, it requires a three-fifths super majority, or 60 members, to pass cloture. Cloture ends debate and brings the legislation or the nomination to a vote within 48 hours. This means that even though it only requires a simple majority to pass legislation in both the House and the Senate, major legislation often can't even be voted on in the Senate unless it has three-fifths support to end the filibuster. So neither party can truly be said to control the Senate unless it has 60 members, which has become rare over the last several decades. And since Senators can talk about whatever they want to, they can also attach riders—meaning unrelated amendments—to a bill if a majority votes for it. And to speed up the legislation, the Senate can bring bills to the floor by unanimous consent and can allow legislation to be considered and passed without debate if all members agree.
Okay, this module is massive, so we're going to stop here for now. Be sure to check out the sequel for everything about Congress and money. Until next time, this is Ben, a la money production. Thanks again for watching. I really appreciate it. If you haven't already, be sure to like, subscribe, and ring the bell, and check out the ultimate review packet to make your life an AP Gov much easier. And I will see you in the next video.