— VOA Learning English — U.S. History Source: Voice of America Learning English (https://learningenglish.voanews.com/) Licence: Public domain (work of the U.S. federal government, 17 U.S.C. §105) Audio is served by the publisher; Budi does not host or modify it.
0:00Many news stories about the United States government tell about Congress and American lawmakers. The US Congress is the nation's legislature. It is made of two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives. is called the House for short, and sometimes it is called The People's House. That term was chosen as a nickname because the men who wrote the US Constitution in 1787 set few restrictions on who could serve there. They wanted the House to be as close as possible to everyday Americans. One of the writers of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote about the House years later. He noted, the door of this part of the federal government is open to merit of every description, whether native or adoptive, whether young or old and without regard to poverty or wealth
1:13or to any particular profession of religious faith. In other words, House members can be born in the United States or in any other country. They can be as young as 25 years old, or as some members have been into their nineties. They do not have to be rich and they do not to belong to any religion. However, in reality for many years only free white men were permitted to serve as lawmakers. Women and other groups had limited legal rights to say the least. However, as laws changed over time, members of the House also changed. The website of the US House of Representatives notes the House's first African-American member was elected in 1870. The first Hispanic member took office in 1877, the first woman member in 1917,
2:25The first Asian American member in 1957, and the first African-American woman member in 1969.
2:38The country's constitution writers also made the terms for House members short compared to the president and senators, only two years. One reason is so House members would have to stay in close contact with the people who live in the area they represent. Otherwise, voters would soon have a chance to push them out of office. One of the other central ideas about the House of Representatives is that known as proportional representation. The idea was that each member of the house would represent 30,000 US citizens. That situation would enable states with large populations to send more lawmakers to Congress. But the Constitution writers of 1787 struggled with how to count a state's population. At that time, more than 650,000 enslaved people lived in the country.
3:49After much debate, the Constitution writers decided the enslaved population would be only partly counted for legal and tax purposes. The decision is known as the Three-Fifths Compromise. The first US House of Representatives had 67 members. As the country's population grew, The number of House members increased from 105 to 142, and so on. After the approval of constitutional amendments following the Civil War, most formerly enslaved people were fully counted in the state's population. The House continued to grow into the 20th century. Finally, in 1929, lawmakers officially We limited the total number of House members to 435. Today, each member of the House represents about 700,000 people. Members of the house along with the senators
5:04develop national laws. They also help voters who live in their districts deal with problems related to the government and members of the houses have other important jobs. They can investigate people with government ties who are suspected of wrongdoing. For example, members of the House have looked into cases of bribery, corruption and abuses of power. In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee demanded information from private citizens suspected of communist activity. But critics said the committee had gone too far. In time, the Supreme Court limited Congress's power to investigate issues related to the law instead of people's private beliefs. Over its history, the House has brought impeachment charges
6:08against government officials, including presidents, more than 60 times, but only a few officials were removed from office. Of those, some were federal judges The House of Representatives website explains that the Constitution writers wanted to put spending decisions in the hands of the people's representatives in Congress. Similarly, the Constitution writers did not want the chief executive to decide alone whether to take the country to war. They wanted to make war difficult to enter. They also wanted to prevent the president from going to war because of political or personal interests. So they wrote that the Congress had the power to declare war. But in truth, lawmakers have only officially declared war 11 times.
7:26The last time was in 1942. Since then, Congress has simply approved the use of military force. I'm Kelli Jean Kelley.
This transcript was generated automatically from the recording, so it will contain mistakes — especially around names and places.