Revision & Exam Practice for the “legacy” A Level qualifications including:

• Edexcel (Unit 3C – Representative Processes in the USA, Unit 4C – Governing the USA)
• AQA (Unit 3A – The Politics of the USA, Unit 4A – The Government of the USA)
• OCR (F855 – US Government & Politics)

REVISE THE US CONGRESS

How to use these questions for revision and exam practice:

1. For short-answer questions, write a 3 paragraph response using the PEEACH paragraph structure (P=point, E=evidence, E=explain, A=argument, C=counter argument, H=how does this answer the question?)
2. Once you have completed your question, read the indicative content and the mark scheme.
3. Complete the “Make It Better” (MIB) Task:
   1. Highlight the parts of the indicative content your were able to fully explain and exemplify in green.
   2. Highlight the parts of the indicative content you partially explained and/or exemplified in yellow.
   3. Highlight the parts of the indicative content which you did not include in red.
4. Using the mark scheme, award yourself a level and a mark – compare this to your target grade – are you on track to achieve this in the examination?
5. There is also a space for you to add additional notes and/or examples that don’t appear in the indicative content, or add better explanations, or include additional, points from the indicative content.

How much power do party leaders have in Congress?

Indicative Content

Since the 1980s, the party leaders in Congress have been gaining influence, the process being particularly marked after the ‘Republican Revolution’ of 1994. ‘Party votes’ have become more frequent, exemplified by unanimous Republican opposition to the stimulus bill and health care reform in President Obama’s first term.
This influence has been exerted by a variety of means, including:

• ignoring seniority in assigning committee chairmanships
• monitoring of progress of favoured legislation through its various stages, and the imposition of timetables on committees for its completion
• working with majority members of the House Rules Committee to design rules likely to produce a bill which most closely meets majority party views, e.g. prohibiting amendments hostile to its preferences
• promises to members of committee assignments, leadership PAC campaign donation and ‘earmarks’, or threats of a primary challenge however, members are still subject to pressures from the administration, constituents, donors and pressure groups (such as Grover Norquist’s ‘Americans for Tax Reform’); earmarks are no longer available; and the limits of party control have been evident in:
• the Democratic representatives (over 30) who voted against ‘Obamacare’ in 2010
• divisions within the House Republicans over Speaker Boehner’s ‘Plan B’ and the ‘fiscal cliff’ legislation

Party control is anyway traditionally weaker in the Senate because:

• senators represent a whole state, and consequently are often more moderate than House representatives from gerrymandered districts
• of their length of tenure
• there is no equivalent to the House Speaker
• much smaller numbers mean there is less need for rules of procedure, and members are more amenable to informal negotiation and compromise