In U.S. politics, the majority floor leader is a partisan position in a legislative body.
In the federal Congress, the roles differ slightly in the two houses: the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives and the Majority Leader of the Senate, respectively. In the House of Representatives, the Majority Leader is elected by the Representatives of the Majority Party; while the responsibilities vary depending upon the political climate, the Majority Leader typically sets the floor agenda and oversees the committee Chairmen. In the United States Senate, its president is ex officio the Vice-President of the United States, and the President pro tempore is a largely ceremonial position, so the majority leader is the actual leader of the majority party.
The role of majority leaders thus differs slightly between the two chambers.
Given the two-party nature of the U.S. system, the majority leader is almost inevitably either a Republican or a Democrat.
The majority leader is often assisted in his role by whips, whose job is to enforce party discipline on votes deemed to be crucial by the party leadership and to ensure that members do not vote in a way not approved of by the party. Some votes are deemed to be so crucial as to lead to punitive measures (such as demotion from choice committee assignments) if the party line is violated; decisions such as these are often made by the majority leader in conjunction with other senior party leaders.
In the various states, the majority leader of a state legislative chamber usually performs a similar role to the federal counterpart.
Famous quotes containing the words majority and/or leader:
“The majority of the men of the North, and of the South and East and West, are not men of principle. If they vote, they do not send men to Congress on errands of humanity; but while their brothers and sisters are being scourged and hung for loving liberty,... it is the mismanagement of wood and iron and stone and gold which concerns them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody?... Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.”
—P.J. (Patrick Jake)