Nick Capodice - A Users Guide to Democracy: How America Works

If theres one thing you have to know about the power structure of our federal government, it is that it, like Gaul, like Lears kingdom, is divided into three. Our U.S. Constitution is the longest-surviving government document, and the first thing it does (after it says hello) is lay out who does what. This system is dependent upon the separation of powers and checks and balances. And these are not the same thing.

• Separation of Powers: This just means that our government is divided into three branches, and no branch has the same powers as any other; they are completely independent and complementary.
• Checks and Balances: This means that no branch of the government can be too powerful, as every major power can be checked, or blocked, by another branch. In James Madisons essay Federalist 51, he said that in this system ambition must be made to counteract ambition. He knew that politicians would be passionate about their ideals and would do anything to advancethem. These checks prevent one branch from unilaterally setting policy. Heres a diagram of how the branches keep one another in line.

At the outset, it seems like the House of Representatives and the Senate do pretty much the same thing.

Senators and representatives drive, walk, or take the secret tiny electric underground train to their respective chambers. There, they propose legislation, talk about it, and vote on it. But while they share many powers, these two houses are not both alike in dignity. Or perceived clout, at least. The length of terms, number of members, unique powers, and methods of legislation make the House and Senate as different as chalk and cheese. But before we do a side-by-side comparison, lets get some terminology out of the way.

When we speak of Congress, were talking about both the House of Representatives and the Senate. They are that mighty first branch, the legislative, whose powers are established in Article I of the Constitution.

CONSTITUTION 101: Our constitution consists of seven articles written on four parchment pages. Article I, which establishes the legislative branch, gets far and away the most ink of them all, coming in at just over two pages by itself. And words are power! The more you have, the more things you can do. The founders clearly intended that Congress, not the president, was to be the most powerful arm of our government. That said, they also didnt want a complete legislative dictatorship, so they carefully explained what Congress could and could not do.

While they are both technically houses, when we say the House we mean the House of Representatives. Those in the House are addressed as congresswoman/-man/-person. And while senators do work in Congress, theyre addressed as senator.

Why not just have one house and be done with it? Why not a nice, pat, unicameral legislature that passes bills for the president to sign? Well, that was how we did things under the Articles of Confederation, our much maligned first constitution. And to be fair, there are some successful one-house legislatures out there (lookin at you, Nebraska!), but the bicameral system was born as a solution to one of the fiercest debates at the Constitutional Convention

When the fifty-five delegates from twelve colonies (Rhode Island was a no-show) were hammering out our new system of government in 1787, there arose a seemingly insurmountable issue of representation. How many people from each state should be elected to Congress? Before the convention even started, James Madison had drafted the Virginia Plan (also called the Randolph Plan or the amusingly blunt Big State Plan), which said that representation in Congress should be based on the number of free inhabitants. Enslaved Americans would initially not be counted toward apportionment. A big whanging state like New York would therefore have many times the power of a state like Delaware. The smaller states were more likely to back William Patersons New Jersey Plan (only referred to as the Little State Plan when New Jersey wasnt in the room), which gave each state one vote, regardless of its size. And thus we got to the Great Compromise, where one house, the House of Representatives, was proportionate to the population of free inhabitants in each state, with enslaved people counting as three-fifths of a person (Native Americans not counting at all), and the other chamber, the Senate, consisting of two people from each state.