United States
The Vice President of the United States is, ex officio, President of the United States Senate, with the power to cast tie-breaking votes. However, while the Vice President has the right to act as presiding officer over the Senate, the rules of the Senate give that office very little power (in contrast to the powerful office of Speaker of the House), and in practice it is often exercised by one of the most junior Senators in attendance.
While vice presidents used to regularly preside over the Senate, modern vice presidents have done so only rarely—vice presidents usually only preside to swear in new senators, during joint sessions, and when casting a tie-breaking vote. The Senate chooses a president pro tempore to preside in the vice president's absence. Modern presidents pro tempore, too, rarely preside over the Senate. In practice, the junior senators of the majority party typically preside in order to learn Senate procedure.
The current Vice President of the United States and President of the United States Senate is Joe Biden.
Only once in U.S. history has the Vice President been elected to represent a different political party from that of the President. In 1796, Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson was elected vice president and Federalist John Adams President; a situation that in part prompted the later adoption of the Twelfth Amendment to prevent such a situation from reoccurring. In addition, Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson were elected together on the National Union ticket in the 1864 presidential election, although Lincoln came from the Republican Party and Johnson was a War Democrat.
The vice president holds a tie-breaking (or "casting") vote in the Senate. Vice presidents have cast 242 tie-breaking votes. The vice president with the most tie breaking votes is John Adams with 29.
Read more about this topic: President Of The Senate
Famous quotes related to united states:
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“In the United States there is more space where nobody is is than where anybody is.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“We now in the United States have more security guards for the rich than we have police services for the poor districts. If you’re looking for personal security, far better to move to the suburbs than to pay taxes in New York.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)