Congressional Flow Chart

The executive bureaucracy plays a key role in the journey of bills, as neither house has more power than the other when it comes to passing or vetoing a bill.

The lobbyists write and support many of the bills. and will push against congressmen and women to pass such bills.

Bills are then passed to a specific committee for review before moving on.

The speaker of the house and house rules committee perform many of the same functions, but the speaker also act as a peacekeeper on the floor of the house.

Seniority helps to determine who is placed onto the committees and who is appointed the committee chairs.

The house committee chairs consist of congressmen and women

The senate committee chairs consist of senators

Senate Committee Chairs provide the legislation that the Senate Majority/Minority Leader presents to the Senate.

The party leaders direct the whips, who work behind the scenes for their respective parties.

Staff agencies aid Majority/Minority Leaders in both houses in the planning of scheduling and legislation

Staff agencies and personal staff perform many of the same functions, however personal staff tends to be more of a one-on-one basis with congress men and women

Personal staff work for the congress men and women in the House and in the Senate

Personal Staff

Seniority

The personal staff of Congress assist all congressional members and carry out many tasks such as writing bills and organizing schedules. If a congress member is supporting a bill it is up to the personal staff to research the bill and inform the congress member what the bill is all about. If a congress member wants to write a bill then the personal staff member would be the one to write the bill that the congress member eventually submits. Since congressional members have busy schedules they do not have time to plan their days and the staff members help with this duty. They can set up meetings on behalf of the member and make the necessary changes to the schedule. One or two staff members are usually in charge of the schedule.

Seniority is the concept of a person or group of people being older in charge or command of another person or group, or taking precedence over them. The United States senate has a system of seniority in place in regards to its members.

Personal Staffers to congress are like high-functioning secretaries with law degrees, as they juggle scheduling and research.

House Committee Chairs

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

Staff Agencies

(GAO, CBO, CRS)

Staff agencies work for congress men and women in the House and the Senate

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

The members of the House Committee Chairs look at bills and issues and oversee agencies and programs. The selection of committee members is made by the House of Representatives, but the members are chosen by the political parties. There are multiple issues where members are separated into, such as Budget and Judiciary. The members have extensive power over bills, and can even block legislation from reaching the House. From 1910 to 1975, the chairs were determined by seniority until it changed to permit party caucuses to elect chairs. Now the chairs control the agenda and can prevent a committee from dealing with a bill.

Personal staff work for the congress men and women in the House and in the Senate

In the staff agencies (GAO, CBO, CRS) there are congressional staff, who are there to aid the congressmen in crafting bills, lobbying, and research. There are three staff agencies. There is GAO, or the Government Accountability Office which is the audit, evaluation, and investigative arm of the United States Congress. It is part of the legislative branch of the United States government. The CBO, or the Congressional Budget Office which is a federal agency within the legislative branch of the United States government that provides economic data to Congress. It was created as a nonpartisan agency by Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Finally, the CRS, which is also known as the Congressional Research Service is the public policy research arm of the United States Congress. As a legislative branch agency within the Library of Congress, CRS works primarily and directly for Members of Congress, their Committees and staff on a confidential, nonpartisan basis.

House Rules Committee

Standing Committees

Congressperson

A special committee of a legislature, as of the U.S. House of Representative, having the authority to establish rules or methods for expending legislative action, and usually determining the date a bill is presented for consideration.The House Rules committee considers all bills reported from policy and fiscal committees and determines whether, and in what order, to schedule their consideration on the floor of the house. The Rules Committee also reviews, adopts and schedule consideration of floor resolutions.

A congressperson is a member of the US House of Representatives. They vote on proposed bills, and each representative serves for a two-year term. Each U.S. state is represented in the House in proportion to its population as measured in the census, but every state is entitled to at least one representative.

Standing Committees analyze bills and issues and recommend measures for consideration by their respective chambers. They also have oversight responsibility to monitor agencies, programs, and activities within their jurisdictions, which include select committees, and in some cases in areas that cut across committee jurisdictions. Due to their permanent nature, these committees exist beyond the adjournment of each two-year meeting of Congress, and are permanent fixtures in both houses.

The House of Representatives, as seen in this photo. The aisle in the middle divides the Republicans from the Democrats.

Speaker of the House

The term speaker is a title often given to the presiding officer of a deliberative assembly, especially a legislative body. The speaker's official role is to moderate debate, make rulings on procedure, announce the results of votes. The Speaker of the House talks to the people in the house and does what ever in need to do in the house.

Staff agencies work for congress men and women in the House and the Senate

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

House Majority/Minority Leader

Committees provide the legislation that the House Majority/Minority Leaders present to the House of Representatives

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

Joint Committees

Bill

Majority leaders in the House were not established by the Constitution and therefore have been in existence only since the 56th Congress.The duties of the majority leader include scheduling legislation for floor consideration as well as planning the daily, weekly, and annual legislative agendas and more generally advancing the goals of the majority party. What this means is that the leader will take into consideration what bills should be voted on and what speeches will be heard on any given day throughout the entire year. This information is now open to the public and in effect serves as a tool with which to judge the performance of the leader. If enough people decide that the annual calendar does not reflect the issues they feel strongly about they can speak up about it. Despite being the leader the officeholder remains the representative of their district in Congress and like the Speaker of the House does not serve on committees. The responsibilities of the minority leader are mostly similar to those of the majority leader except that the minority leader speaks for the minority party and works to protect the rights of that party. The term minority does not refer to ethnicity, instead it refers to the party that does not have control of the House. They still act as representative of their district and do not lead floor discussion.

The bill is a draft of a proposed law presented to parliament for discussion.

Joint Committees consist of Members of both Houses and have jurisdiction over matters of joint interest. Most joint committees are standing committees (for example, the Joint Committee on the Library) but special joint committees have been created to address specific issues, such as the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, which is a select committee.

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

House Majority/Minority Whip

The minority leader of the House does not hold much of a publicly important job since in Pelosi’s first years as the minority leader many had either never heard of her or did not know enough about her to give an opinion. During her years as Speaker of the House her unfavorable rating soared and after her tenure as Speaker it shot back down.

The majority leaders in the House hold a lot of power and since currently we have a majority Republican House and a Democratic president a lot of disagreement can arise causing legislation to stall.

Each party selects a chief deputy whip as well as other deputy and other whips. The whips for both parties mainly act as assistants to the party leaders and middlemen between leadership and other party members. They assist the leadership in managing the party’s legislative program on the House floor, maintain communication between leadership and party members, count votes on key legislation, and persuading members to vote for the party position. In the absence of a party floor leader, the whip can often serve as the acting floor leader. These whips play an important role in congress in that they facilitate information between other House representatives and the House leaders for both the majority and minority parties.

Executive Bureaucracy

A large, complex organization composed of appointed officials, where no one person makes all of the decisions and power is split among the appointed officials.

Bills are a draft of a law which are debated over in the House and Senate Committees. If both the House and Senate unanimously agree on the bill then it is sent to the White House. If the President signs the bill, then it becomes law.

In the United States, our executive bureaucracy consists of three branches of government, neither of which has an ultimate power over another (a system of checks and balances)

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

Senate Majority/Minority Leader

Staff agencies aid Majority/Minority Leaders in both houses in the planning of scheduling and legislation

Lobbyists

Conference Committees

People who try to influence legislation or administrative decisions on behalf of a special interest; member of a lobby. They attempt to influence business and government leaders to create legislation that will help certain organizations (bills).

Senate leaders are elected by their respective parties in a party assembled conference which is sometimes known as a caucus. This vote selects the leader for the following two years and the leader is subject to re-election at the end of these two years. The leaders have an important role in the Senate seeing as they must stay informed with domestic, international and legislative matters. The party leader is elected to carry out the party’s legislative program and the members of the party give the leader support in exchange for the leader’s assistance in meeting their individual political needs. The leader spends a majority of their time keeping up with current legislation that their party wants to see passed and then makes sure that the legislation is passed. They remain on the floor everyday to check on legislation and if they are absent they designate someone to take their place. Minority leaders have basically the same roles except that they work to protect the rights of the minority party.

Conference Committees are appointed by the House of Representatives and Senate to resolve disagreements on a particular bill. The conference committee is usually composed of the senior Members of the standing committees of each House that originally considered the legislation. The conference committee produces a conference report melding the work of the House and Senate into a final version of the bill. A conference report proposes legislative language as an amendment to the bill committed to conference.

Lobbyists, seen as the hand writing out the politician’s speech in the political cartoon above, are known to tell politicians what to do or say in order to conduct an activity or aid specific groups; for their own benefit.

Senate Majority/Minority Whip

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

The majority whip in the Senate follows a role similar to the whips of the House. Some of their roles include assisting the floor leader, ensuring member attendance, counting votes, and generally communicating the majority position. The whips are essential cogs in the machine of the Senate and they do the all of the behind- the-scenes work for the leader and the party to make sure that the leaders term goes smoothly and that all of his duties are carried out. The minority leaders follow the same roles and responsibilities except that they respond the the minority leaders and the minority party.

Select Committees

Senate Committee Chairs

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

Select Committees are appointed to perform a special function that is beyond the authority or capacity of a standing committee. A select committee is usually created by a resolution that outlines its duties and powers and the procedures for appointing members. Select and special committees are often investigative in nature, rather than legislative.

The chair of each committee and a majority of its members represent the majority party. The chair primarily controls a committee’s business. Each party assigns its own members to committees, and each committee distributes its members among its subcommittees. The Senate places limits on the number and types of panels any one senator may serve on and chair. They also control the committee’s agenda and determine the time that should be dedicated to considering a bill.

The committees are overseen by House and Senate Committee Chairs.

Senators

In the U.S. Senate, each U.S. state is represented by two senators, regardless of population, who serve staggered six-year terms.The Senate has several exclusive powers not granted to the House, including consenting to treaties as a precondition to their ratification, and consenting to or confirming appointments of Cabinet secretaries, federal judges, other federal executive officials, military officers, regulatory officials, ambassadors, and other federal uniformed officers, as well as trial of federal officials impeached by the House.

Unlike the House of Representatives, the senate is not divided down the middle by party, and is much smaller.

Congressional Flow Chart