Every other Tuesday, the team behind Civics 101 joins NHPR’s All Things Considered host Julia Furukawa to talk about how our democratic institutions actually work.
We’re in the midst of election season. With New Hampshire’s primary less than a month away, there are many candidates vying for the state’s two Congressional seats. Civics 101 host Nick Capodice joins Julia this week to talk about what our U.S House representatives actually do in D.C. and how we, as voters, can hold them accountable.
Transcript
Nick, what are powers specific to the House?
Well, Julia, the House specifically is often referred to as the ‘people's chamber’ because, unlike the Senate, the House gets a number of representatives proportional to the state's population.
But to their powers, to your question, they write legislation just like the Senate. However, the House has what is called the power of the purse, which means that appropriations bills, bills that deal with money, must originate in the House. Now there's a lot of congressional prestidigitation around that. There are ways that the Senate can tell the House, ‘Hey, propose this bill, why don't you?’ But the Constitution says money bills have to start in the House.
One last power worth mentioning, Julia, is that the House has the power to impeach—-not remove, but impeach presidents, veeps [vice presidents], judges and other civil officers. And the Senate has the trial and does the removal part.
Congress has been pretty inefficient this year. They've only enacted 78 bills so far, compared to the hundreds of congresses-past. What’s going on there? Is the House working the way it was designed to?
Julia, if you judge efficacy by passed legislation, I think inefficient is a severe understatement. If you're looking at substantive, like impacting our lives versus naming post offices, in that essence, the Congress has pretty much just passed bills to keep the government funded.
Now it's murky waters whenever we try to divine the intents of the framers. But I will say this is not how it usually goes. Since the House gets a full refresh every two years, all 435 reps have their jobs on the line. It is said that the second you get elected into the House of Representatives, you begin your campaign. You have only two years to do your job and get reelected. So the House tends to be the ones that pass a lot more reactionary topical legislation that is relative to what's going on right now. There is a famous line that George Washington apparently said to Thomas Jefferson about how the Senate is the saucer that cools the hot tea of the house. Nobody drinks tea out of a saucer anymore [so] a teacher I know started referring to the Senate as a coffee cup sleeve instead. But it's usually the House that passes a bunch of stuff. And the Senate, with its six year terms, is like, hold on a little bit. And this reversal that we've got going on now is entirely due to extreme polarization and a razor thin majority, a Republican majority, in the House. Until one of those things shifts, either way, it's going to remain the same.
So how can we make sure our House representatives are working in our best interests?
We are in an era of more and more transparency and information than we have ever been before. We can follow every single piece of legislation that a representative votes for, and we can thus hold them accountable. Now, participating in our democracy isn't just voting, it's making your voice heard about what you care about. If your rep isn't doing what you want, make it known.
And I mentioned it before, but it is still important: voting. If you feel your elected officials don't care about you or your demographic, if you vote in record numbers, regardless of which side you vote for, politicians will say, ‘Wow, hey, these people are voting. Let's start to pass legislation that makes them happy.’ As we say so often on the show, voting is like doing push ups for your personal demographic: It makes you a far more powerful voice in determining what legislation matters.
