Okay, let’s compare the House of Representatives to the California State Assembly. We’re going to begin with the House of Representatives, 435 members, 52 of whom come from California, and that number was set by the Apportionment Act 1929. In the California State Assembly, we only have 80 members in that assembly and one per district, 80 districts. We have 120 women in the House of Representatives, and the states that only have one House representative include Alaska, Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, and Wyoming. Redistricting, this sets the district boundaries for the House of Representatives, but it also sets the district boundaries for the state legislature. Gerrymandering means redistricting in a way that benefits political outcome, for example, to benefit a political party, or a political ideology, or a political issue. The party power in the House of Representatives are the Republicans, in the California State Assembly, it is the Democrats. The term of office for both the House and the State Assembly are two years, but in the House of Representatives, there are no term limits, which means you can stay in the House of Representatives for as long as you get reelected, and they are reelected every two years. But for the California State Assembly, it’s still a two -year term, but it limited to six terms because of Prop 28. They are up for re-election for every two years. When they finish six terms, they have to leave the state assembly, and never be elected there again. I also have included the number of citizens per rep, which is mostly three-quarters of a million people for the House of Representatives, and less than 500,000 for the State Assembly. The presiding officer is the recent elected Mark Johnson from Louisiana to be the Speaker of the House of Representatives. For the California State Assembly, we have Anthony Rendon, who is also a Democrat. Committee assignments are made by the Speaker and the House Rules Committee, and the Speaker of the House of Representatives does not have to serve on any committee whatsoever. Now, on the California State Assembly side, let me clarify Prop 28. California legislators can only serve a maximum of 12 years and neither legislative chamber. Once they finish 12 years, they have to leave the state legislature and go find something else to do with their life.
Okay, let’s compare the U.S. Senate to the California State Senate. In the U.S. Senate, we have 100 senators total to from each state. The party in power in the Senate right now are at the Democrats. There are 52 Democrats, 48 Republicans, and amongst that 100 includes 25 women as of 2023, and the 118th Congress. The term of office is six years. There are no term limits for the U.S. Senate. Re-election is one-third every two years, so the 100 are broken down into three groups, and each group takes its turn being re-elected every two years. The number of citizens per U.S. Senator is the entire state population. The presiding officers is Kamala Harris. Yes, she’s the vice president of the United States, but she also serves as the president of the Senate, followed by Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and she is the President Pro Tem, which means she’s the longest serving Democrat in the Senate right now, and followed by Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York, who is the majority leader. The committee assignments are set by the Senate Rules Committee, and now we get to something that only exists in the U.S. Senate, and that’s called a filibuster. A filibuster is an attempt to prevent legislation from passing. If you want to kill legislation, do a filibuster, but there is a way to end a filibuster, and that’s to call for a cloture vote, which if you get three-fourths of the senators agreeing to the cloture vote, you will end the filibuster. Let’s look at the California State Senate. We have 40 senators, one per district. The party in power are the Democrats. The term of office for the state Senate is four years. Now, let’s look back. The U.S. Senate has a six-year term. The state Senate only gets a four-year term. Make a note of that. They are subject to term limits in the state Senate. They can do up to three terms, according to Proposition 28, and one -half are up for reelection every two years. The number of citizens per state senator is about 940 ,000 Californians. The presiding officer in the state Senate is Tony Atkins, who is a Democrat from the San Diego Area, and her title is President Pro Tem simply because that’s the title we give to the presiding officer in the state Senate. On a final note, again, the California legislators can now only serve a maximum of 12 years in either chamber, but not both. You can do 12 years in assembly, or you can do 12 years in the Senate, no mixing it up.
The functions of Congress include these items, as well as the items on the next slide. The first function is to be a delegate and trustee. To be a delegate means you’re paying attention to your constituencies, the people in your own district back home in your home state, and that means providing funding for new schools, jobs, housing, emergency cleanup in case there’s an earthquake or hurricane. Basically, you are taking care of the needs of your constituencies, but you also have to be a trustee, which means sometimes you have to set aside the constituents in your district and focus in on broader more national issues, whether it is a civil war, an international war, a dramatic hurricane damage in another state other than California. Sometimes broader issues take precedence, but it can be a challenge to do that because back when Bill Clinton was impeached, we had a local legislator from the House of Representatives here in California who thought that impeachment of Bill Clinton was far more important than listening to his constituents. His constituents did not want Bill Clinton impeached, let alone remove from office. So a year later when that one congressman went to get reelected, he was actually defeated because he chose to be trustee over delegate. It’s risky, but sometimes you have to make those hard choices. The second item is right legislation. This is where you get to make our change laws. And by the way, the budget is a piece of legislation, so that’s going to be part of the overall equation here in terms of writing legislation. And as we know, legislation in order for it to pass has to be passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate and then signed by the President. Now, legislation, most legislation can go indeed of the House or the Senate, but only budget bills have to start with the House before it goes to the Senate. Just be aware of that. Now, the third item on this list is raise revenue, raise money because it costs money to run a government. It costs money to run the post office, NASA, the State Department, the Pentagon. It costs money to run programs like financial aid programs for college students or Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid for our older citizens. So we have to raise money to make these programs work. Now, within the context of raising revenues, you also have to consider authorizations and appropriations. Authorizations is what Congress is willing to spend on any program or agency. It’s what they’re willing to spend. But at the same time, they’re planning for future spending because they’re never just working on this year’s budget. Congress is always working on the budgets for the next several years simultaneously. So authorizations happen throughout the year several times over depending on which budget they’re talking about. Appropriations is where Congress actually spends the money. This is where the agencies and the programs get funded. Cash is paid out. Payroll is met for those who work for the federal government. Now, the fiscal year for the federal government starts on October 1st and ends the following September 30th. Notice it’s not a calendar, typical calendar year. So, for example, the 2019-2020 budget started on October 1st, 2019 and ends on September 30th, 2020. That’s how it works. For the California State, it is July 1st to the following June 30th. Okay, the next function for Congress is legislative oversight. It is written into the Constitution. This is part of our checks and balances where Congress has the right to look at and review all of our programs, all of our agencies to make sure that they’re living up to expectations. This is kind of like your employer giving you an employee evaluation every once in a while, making sure that everything you do is up to expectations. This is where the Congress can check the military, the courts, the State Department, the post office, NASA, the EPA, the FDA on all these different programs. And yes, this doesn’t include the White House. And yes, this could lead to an impeachment of the president that all falls under legislative oversight because the Constitution requires this of Congress. Now, the next item is committee work. Everything I talked about up until now is actually done by committee work. And there’s several different types of committees. The first one is a standing committee. No, they’re not standing on their feet while they’re doing their committee meeting. Standing is another word for permanent. As in this is a permanent committee that always exists, no matter who’s in Congress, who the president is or what year it is. It’s a permanent committee. The House Rules Committee and the Senate Rules Committee that I spoke of a moment ago are examples of standing committees. Now, the standing committees often will break down into subcommittees in order to dull out the different bills of legislation. For example, if we’re talking about the Foreign Policy Committee and the U.S. Senate and they’re dealing with legislation involving countries around the world, well, instead of having all the entire committee make up, do all of the work all together at the same time, which is burdensome.
Instead, Foreign Affairs Committee will say, well, okay, these people will deal with any legislation deal with Africa. Then this next subcommittee will deal with European affairs. This next committee will deal with Latin American affairs. Another one will deal with Asian affairs and so on. Now, so the subcommittees will actually be doing all the writing of all the legislation. They report back to their standing committee. They’ll do revisions. They’ll do rewrites. They will vote on it if they vote on it to pass the legislation. Then it goes back to either the full House or the full Senate for a final vote. Or sometimes many pieces of legislation never get out of subcommittees. Sometimes they never get out the standing committee because there’s too many problems with that piece of legislation. A conference committee. A conference committee is only used on a temporary basis, so it is a temporary committee, but what’s unique about the conference committee is this. The members of the committee will consist of House members and Senate members. And they will come together occasionally on a temporary basis to resolve any issues that they have regarding the federal budget or any other piece of legislation. The last committee that I want to talk about is a joint committee. A joint committee is a different type of a permanent committee that deals on very specific topics, very narrow and very specific topics. The joint committee is made up of House and Senate members. And one example of the joint committee is the joint committee on taxation to deal with all things involving taxation and the tax code for the U.S. government. The last thing I want to talk about is Hendrick Smith’s definition of politics. He is a former journalist that was based on Washington DC’s written number of books about it. And I found his definition of politics a very interesting as we apply it to Congress. The definition of politics is that it is a continuous struggle for power and influence. For example, if you look at the House of Representatives, 435 members, and well, what if you want, if you remember the House of Representatives and you want to move up and ring and become the next House Speaker? Well, you got competition. And what are you going to do to get yourself notice powerful and influential? You see the same thing in the Senate. Individuals are jogging for power influence amongst themselves. Now, there’s also the competition between the House and the Senate. Why? Because both sides have certain things that they can do and certain things they cannot do and sometimes jealousies arise between the two. For example, in the House of Representatives, only they can impeach a president. But it’s only the Senate that determines the outcome. In terms of budget issues, it always has to begin with the House. Never the Senate. But the Senate has certain things that the House does not have. For example, the Senate can confirm and ratify all presidential deployments. They can ratify all presidential treaties. They can help the president change treaties or undo treaties. The House has always left behind. So there’s all and we also have to remember that the House has a two-year term. So they’re always running like crazy trying to get to collect enough information and enough legislation passed to prove that they’re worthy of reelection. The Senate has a six-year term. So they get to kick back and relax and not worry so much about their next reelection unlike the House members. So you have that struggle going on between both chambers. What’s also interesting is if you have one party controlling one House and another one controlling the Senate, talk about party competition at work. But there’s also competition between the whole of Congress and the White House. Because sometimes Congress and the White House do not always see eye to eye on a lot of different things and therefore legislative clashes will occur. Again, it is a continuous struggle for power and influence no matter who’s in the White House or who’s in the Congress. But it makes it kind of interesting.
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