For nearly a century, the House has been fixed with 435 members. A growing movement in Congress and in think tanks, however, seeks to bump that number up to increase public access to members, improve diversity and reduce workloads for individual members. In January, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) introduced H.R. 622, the Restoring Equal and Accountable Legislators in the House (REAL House) Act, which would add 150 seats to the House, increasing it to 585 members. “Members of the House of Representatives are their constituents’ most direct connection to the federal government and its resources and services,” Blumenauer said in…

Members of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma are advocating to have a delegate from the tribe seated in Congress in this legislative session. They point to the 1835 Treaty of New Echota, which provided members of the Cherokee Nation with $5 million and land in Oklahoma in exchange for several million acres of their ancestral homeland east of the Mississippi River. That treaty also included a right to have a delegate from the tribe in the U.S. House of Representatives, a right that so far has never been exercised. In the fall of 2022, the U.S. House Committee on Rules…

As millions of Americans moved to virtual work in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, so too did members of the U.S. House of Representatives. The move was designed to allow lawmakers to continue working on behalf of their constituents without putting Capitol staff or other lawmakers at risk from the virus. However, some in Congress now say that the danger has passed and that it’s time to lift proxy voting rules, saying it hinders the legislative process. While the Senate continued to require members to show up in person throughout the pandemic, the House passed a temporary resolution…

There is growing momentum in Congress to limit elected officials’ ability to buy and sell stocks while they serve in public office. Government watchdogs have long called for such a ban, but it took on new life after reports that several lawmakers may have profited from stock sales during the COVID-19 pandemic that could have been influenced by intelligence briefings. For example, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) was investigated by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for stock trades he made shortly after he was briefed about COVID-19 in early 2020. Burr unloaded as much as $1.7 million of stocks following…

In its first votes of the 113th Congress, the Senate adopted several rule changes designed to make it easier to bring bills and nominations to the floor for a vote. The changes, which were broken into two separate resolutions, were based on a bipartisan agreement reached between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (NV-D) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (KY-R) in response to a growing chorus of calls for filibuster reform. It is hoped that the new rules, though modest, will help to some extent to break the legislative logjam that characterized the last Congress and to action on the…

On January 3, 2013, 100 senators and 434 representatives (there is one vacancy) will take the oath of office and become the 113th Congress of the United States. Senate Democrats picked up two additional seats in the 2012 elections, giving them a 55-vote majority, including the two Independents, who are expected to caucus with the majority party. With the Republicans holding 45 seats, and Vice President Joe Biden’s tie-breaking vote, it might appear that the Democrats have a comfortable cushion; but under the current filibuster rules, any senator can still stall a vote and demand a supermajority of 60 votes…

Legislative business for the second session of the 112th Congress begins in the House on January 17 and in the Senate on January 23. President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on January 24. With a number of important issues still unresolved, the combativeness of 2011 may be just a warm-up for what lies ahead, as lawmakers return to an even more partisan election year environment. Congressional Digest will be reporting on these and other topics in the year ahead.

For the second time this summer, President Obama used his weekly radio and video address to push for passage of legislation to require public disclosure of who funds political advertising. On Saturday, September 18, he said that Congress has a responsibility to act, even if it’s too late to have an impact this election season.

Despite the Senate’s failure to pass the DISCLOSE Act last July (Congressional Digest, September 2010), the bill’s supporters aren’t giving up on the campaign finance measure. In fact, the bill was the subject of President Obama’s weekly radio address to the Nation on August 21, in which he vowed to “continue to fight for reform and transparency.”