The United States Senate, named after the ancient Roman Senate, is the upper house of the Congress of the United States, smaller than the U.S. House of Representatives. Together, they comprise the legislative branch of the United States government.

Seal of the Senate

Each state elects two senators through statewide elections, for a total of 100 senators. The Constitution of the United States endows the U.S. Senate, in addition to its duty of passing all legislation passed through Congress, with the exclusive responsibility of confirming certain Presidential appointments, particularly federal judges (as part of the system of checks and balances) and ratifying international treaties negotiated by the executive.

The Senate chamber is located in the north wing of the U. S. Capitol building, in Washington, D.C..

Operation

The impeachment trial of Bill Clinton (1999)

Unlike the United States House of Representatives there are no strict rules regarding the debate, and one strategy used by senators to kill a bill is to filibuster which is to continue to debate the bill thereby preventing its passage. On March 8, 1917 the power of the filibuster was considerably reduced in theory by the cloture rule in which 60 senators can sign a petition to end debate (the initial version of the rule called for 2/3 but that was later reduced to 3/5). In practice, this rule is rarely used as Senators are reluctant to end debate so forcefully and may avoid breaking a filibuster to prevent retaliation against possible future filibusters of their own. The first ongoing filibuster in the Senate began on February 18, 1841 and lasted until March 11. The longest filibuster in the U.S. Senate was delivered by Strom Thurmond. He spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes in an unsuccessful attempt to block the Civil Rights Act of 1957. He began by reading the entire text of each state's election laws.

See also: U.S. Senate procedures

Leadership

The Vice President of the United States also serves as President of the Senate and is empowered with the duty of presiding over all proceedings and breaking tie votes. However, in practice, the Vice President rarely enters the Senate chamber, and the members of the Senate choose a President pro tempore (usually the most senior member of the majority party) to stand in the Vice President's absence. However, even the President pro tempore delegates his duties as presiding officer in the Senate chamber to junior members because (unlike in the House) the presiding officer is accorded with little authority.

The agenda of the Senate is determined by the Majority floor leader (leader of the party with a majority of seats), who is assisted by a Majority whip (responsible for "whipping" party members in line). Their counterparts across the aisle are the Minority floor leader and Minority whip.

When the major parties are evenly split, the party affiliation of the Vice President, as the tie-breaker vote, determines which is the majority party.

Composition and elections

With two Senators from each state, the Senate presently has 100 members. For details, see the current list of United States Senators. When it first convened on March 4, 1789, the Senate had 21 members--two from each of the 11 states that had ratified the Constitution to that point except New York, which did not seat its second Senator until July 16. Senators serve for terms of six years; the terms are staggered so that approximately one-third of the Senate is up for election every two years: each time there are elections in about 33 states for one of the two seats. They coincide with the elections for the House of Representatives; alternately they coincide with the presidential election; when they do not, they are called mid-term elections.

Before 1913, state legislatures appointed the Senators (an example of indirect election); since the passage of the Seventeenth Amendment, Senators have been elected directly by voters. Senators are elected by their state as a whole; if both Senate seats are contested in one election year, the elections will be separate and all voters in the state will cast votes for one candidate in each of the two races. Because of the staggered terms, this will only occur when a Senator fails to complete a full six year term due to death or resignation.

If a vacancy occurs between elections, generally the governor of the state appoints a replacement to serve as senator until the next biennial election.

As put forth in Article I, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, a senator must be: at least 30 years of age, a citizen of the United States for the past nine years, and reside in the state he or she represents at the time of election.

Committees

Much of the business of the Senate is done in Congressional committees. Committees usually have their own staffs, separate from the staffs of individual members. Committees often have subcommittees. Each committee has a chairperson and a ranking minority leader.

Because the Senate is smaller, the committees within the Senate are generally less powerful than the corresponding committees in the House. The exceptions to this are the Judiciary Committee which reviews Presidential appointments to federal judgeships, and the Foreign Relations Committee which reviews treaties.

Standing Committees of the U.S. Senate

• U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
• U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations
• U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services
• U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs
• U.S. Senate Committee on Budget
• U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
• U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
• U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works
• U.S. Senate Committee on Finance
• U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations
• U.S. Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs
• U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions
• U.S. Senate Committee on Judiciary
• U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration
• U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship
• U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs

Joint Committees of Congress

• U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Printing
• U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation
• U.S. Congress Joint Committee on the Library
• U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee

Special, Select and Other Committees of the U.S. Senate

• U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs
• U.S. Senate Select Committee on Ethics
• U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
• U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging

During the 108th Congress (2003-2005)

see: List of United States Senators for complete party rankings by senator.

History

Debate over Compromise of 1850 in the Old Senate Chamber.

The Senate was designed as a more deliberative body than the House. Edmund Randolph called for its members to be "less than the House of Commons [sic] . .. to restrain, if possible, the fury of democracy." According to James Madison, "The use of the Senate is to consist in proceeding with more coolness, with more system, and with more wisdom, than the popular branch." Instead of two year terms like in the House, Senators serve six year terms giving them more authority to ignore mass sentiment in favor of the country's broad interests. The smaller number of members and staggered terms also gives the Senate a greater sense of community.

Many of the Founding Fathers greatly admired the British government. At the Constitutional Convention, Hamilton called "the British government the best in the world," and said "he doubted whether anything short of it would do in America." In his "Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States," Adams said "the English Constitution is, in theory, both for the adjustment of the balance and the prevention of its vibrations, the most stupendous fabric of human invention." In the minds of many of the Founding Fathers, the US Senate would be an American kind of House of Lords. John Dickinson said the Senate should "consist of the most distinguished characters, distinguished for their rank in life and their weight of property, and bearning as strong a likeness to the British House of Lords as possible." (Harpers, May 2004, 42)

Devised as part of the Connecticut Compromise, the Senate was also intended to give states with smaller populations equal standing with larger states, which are given proportionately more Representation in the House.

The apportionment scheme of the U.S. Senate was controversial at the time. At the Constitutional Convention, each state had an equal vote. The five states that favored equal proportionment in the Senate - Delaware, North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey, and Connecticut - actually only represented one third of the nation's population. The four states that voted against the proposal - Virginia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Georgia, actually represented more people than the proponents. Convention delagate James Wilson wrote "Our Constituents, had they voted as their representatives did, would have stood as 2/3 against equality, and 1/3 only in favor of it." (Harpers Magazine, May 2004, 36) One reason the large states accepted the Connecticut Compromise was a fear that the small states would either refuse to join the Union, or, as Gunning Bedford, Jr. of Delaware threatened, "the small ones w[ould] find some foreign ally of more honor and good faith, who will take them by the hand and do them justice." (New Republic, August 7th, 2002)

In Federalist No. 62, James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” openly admitted that the equal suffrage in the Senate was a compromise, a “lesser evil,” and not born out of any political theory. “[I]t is superfluous to try, by the standard of theory, a part of the Constitution which is allowed on all hands to be the result, not of theory, but ‘of a spirit of amity, and that mutual deference and concession which the peculiarity of our political situation rendered indispensable.’ “

At the time of the Connecticut Compromise, the largest state, Virginia, had only twelve times the population of the smallest state, Delaware. Today, the largest state, California, has a population that is seventy times greater than the population of the smallest state, Wyoming.

In 1932, Hattie Caraway became the first elected female senator (Rebecca Latimer Felton had become the first woman to serve as a senator in 1922 due to the death of Senator Thomas E. Watson).

The first session of Senate to be open to the public was held on February 11, 1794 and on February 27, 1986 the Senate allowed its debates to be televised on a trial basis (which was later made permanent).

On February 3, 2004, preliminary tests showed the presence of ricin in an office mailroom. Fears of a domestic terror incident similar to the 2001 Anthrax attacks have been raised. There is a small probability that the powder that was found was not ricin, but a form of laxative, also based on Castor bean.

See also

• Salaries of United States Senators

External links

• Official Website of the U.S. Senate (http://www.senate.gov)
• Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress, 1774 to Present (http://bioguide.congress.gov/biosearch/biosearch.asp)
• Chronological list of U.S. Senators, 1789-2003 (http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/resources/pdf/chronlist.pdf)