2.2 Structures, Powers, and Functions of Congress

• Speaker of the House: chosen by the whole House, in practice the majority party's leader. The Speaker controls which bills reach the floor, assigns bills to committees and influences committee assignments.
• Majority and minority leaders and whips (both chambers): leaders plan strategy and schedule; whips count votes and pressure members to vote with the party.
• Senate presiding officers: the vice president is president of the Senate but votes only to break ties. The president pro tempore, usually the longest-serving majority senator, presides in the VP's absence, mostly as an honor.
• Senate majority leader: the real power in the Senate, because the majority leader gets priority to speak and largely controls the floor schedule.

Thousands of bills are introduced every Congress, and only a small share become law. Committees divide the work by subject and are where most bills die. The majority party holds a majority of seats on each committee and picks every chair.

• Standing committees: permanent, by policy area, such as Agriculture, Judiciary or Armed Services. The House Ways and Means Committee handles taxes, and both chambers have powerful Appropriations Committees that set spending.
• Select committees: temporary, for a special investigation or issue.
• Joint committees: members from both chambers, usually for research or housekeeping.
• Conference committees: temporary groups from both chambers that work out differences between House and Senate versions of a bill.
• House Rules Committee: decides the rules for each bill's floor debate, including how long it lasts and whether amendments are allowed (a closed rule bans them). Because it's stacked with majority-party members, it's a key tool of majority control. The House can also act as the Committee of the Whole, a format with looser rules (such as a smaller quorum) that speeds up debate and amendments.

• A member introduces the bill, and it's referred to a committee.
• The committee or a subcommittee holds hearings and a markup, where members revise the text, then votes on it. Most bills never get out of committee. In the House, a discharge petition signed by a majority (218 members) can force a bill out, though this rarely succeeds.
• In the House, the Rules Committee sets the terms of debate, and the full House votes.
• In the Senate, the majority leader schedules the bill, usually bringing it to the floor by unanimous consent, an agreement by all senators to skip the normal procedures. Any one senator can object. Debate is open-ended unless senators agree otherwise.
• Both chambers must pass identical text. Differences are worked out in a conference committee or by passing amended versions back and forth.
• The president signs it, vetoes it, or lets it become law without a signature after 10 days (Sundays excepted) while Congress is in session.

A hold is a senator's informal notice that they will object to moving a bill or nomination by unanimous consent, which slows or stalls it. A filibuster is using the Senate's unlimited debate to block a vote. Ending debate takes a cloture vote of three-fifths of the Senate, which is 60 senators. So in practice, most major bills need 60 votes in the Senate, not just 51.

There are exceptions. Since rule changes in 2013 and 2017, cloture on all presidential nominations, including Supreme Court justices, needs only a simple majority. Certain budget bills passed through a process called reconciliation also can't be filibustered.

The president sends Congress a budget proposal, but Congress controls the money. Appropriations bills must pass by the start of the fiscal year on October 1; if they don't, Congress passes a temporary continuing resolution or the government partly shuts down.

Mandatory spending is required by existing law and doesn't need yearly approval: mainly entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, plus interest on the national debt. Discretionary spending is decided each year in appropriations bills: defense, education, transportation, science and so on. Mandatory spending and interest now make up roughly three-quarters of federal spending, so the part Congress actually debates each year is only around a quarter. As the population ages, mandatory spending keeps growing.

Two practices shape spending deals. Pork-barrel spending is money for local projects that benefit a member's own district, often through earmarks. Logrolling is vote trading: “I'll vote for your bill if you vote for mine.”