US Congress
Also called: United States Congress · Topic: Parliament: Composition, Powers and Law-making · NCERT: Beyond NCERT
Meaning
The US Congress is the law-making body of the United States. Article I of the US Constitution sets it up. It has two Houses. In the House of Representatives, members serve 2-year terms, and every seat is elected at the same time. In the Senate, each state has two seats, whatever its population. Senators serve 6-year terms, and one-third of the seats come up for election every two years. Since the 17th Amendment (1913), voters elect senators directly. Before that, state legislatures chose them. Congress holds the power to declare war, but it cannot remove the President by a simple vote. This makes it a good contrast with India's Parliament.
Example
In the 1926 mid-term elections (polls held halfway through a President's term), President Coolidge's Republicans held Congress. The Democrats needed only 9 more Senate seats and 36 more House seats to win control. That would have left the President facing a Congress run by the other party, which is called divided government.
Don't confuse with
- Parliament of India: The President is part of Parliament (Art. 79). The government must keep the Lok Sabha's confidence or leave office (Art. 75(3)). The US President is not part of Congress and does not depend on its support to stay in office.
- Rajya Sabha: The elected MLAs of each state choose its members, and seats are shared out mostly by population. US senators are elected directly by the people, with two from every state.
Recent developments
- November 2026 mid-terms: Democrats won both the House and the Senate. President Trump now faces divided government, meaning a Congress run by the other party, for the last two years of his term. In 2018, during his first term, only the House changed hands, so losing both Houses is a sharper check. Trump still stays in office, which shows how a mid-term limits a US President without removing him.
- February 2026, US Supreme Court tariffs ruling (6–3): The Court held that the IEEPA, a 1977 emergency law, does not let the President impose tariffs, because Article I gives the power to tax imports to Congress. This makes trade a key lever for the new Democratic Congress. However, tariffs based on older laws Congress already passed, such as Section 232, stay in place unless Congress passes a new law. The President can veto that law, and overriding a veto needs a two-thirds vote in both Houses.
- 14 February 2026, partial government shutdown: A partial shutdown, where government offices close because their funding has run out, began after talks on funding the Department of Homeland Security broke down. It happened while Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate and the House. This shows that Congress's control over spending can stall the government even when one party holds all three.
- New Congress, 2027: Hakeem Jeffries is expected to become the first African-American Speaker of the House, the officer who runs the House of Representatives, like the Lok Sabha Speaker in India. As Speaker, he will lead the Democratic majority in its dealings with the President.