Members of The United States Congress

Members Of The United States Congress

The One Hundred Twelfth United States Congress is the current meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C. on January 3, 2011, and will end on January 3, 2013, 17 days before the end of the presidential term to which Barack Obama was elected in 2008. Senators elected to regular terms in 2006 will complete those terms in this Congress. This Congress includes the last House of Representatives elected from congressional districts that were apportioned based on the 2000 census.

In the 2010 midterm elections, the Republican Party won the majority in the House of Representatives. While the Democrats kept their Senate majority, it was reduced from the previous Congress. This is the first Congress in which the House and Senate are controlled by different parties since the 107th Congress (2001–2003), and the first Congress to begin that way since the 99th Congress (1985–1987). In this Congress, the House of Representatives has the largest number of Republican members, 242, since the 80th Congress (1947–1949). This is also the first Congress since 1947 in which a member of the Kennedy family has not served, as well as the most politically polarized Congress since Reconstruction, with record low approval ratings.

Read more about Members Of The United States Congress:  Major Events, Party Summary, Administrative Officers

Famous quotes containing the words members of the, members of, members, united, states and/or congress:

    “A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, “Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.””
    —Marquis De Custine (1790–1857)

    “Every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members of our happy confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and support.”
    —Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    “Mr. Speaker, Mr. President, Members of the House, Members of the Senate, my fellow Americans, all I have I would have given gladly not to be standing here today.”
    —Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    “There was no speculation so promising, or at the same time so praisworthy, as the United Metropolitan Improved Hot Muffin and Crumpet Baking and Punctual Delivery Company.”
    —Charles Dickens (1812–1870)

    “During the first World War women in the United States had a chance to try their capacities in wider fields of executive leadership in industry. Must we always wait for war to give us opportunity? And must the pendulum always swing back in the busy world of work and workers during times of peace?”
    —Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)

    “What Congress and the popular sentiment approve is rarely defeated by reason of constitutional objections. I trust the measure will turn out well. It is a great relief to me. Defeat in this way, after a full and public hearing before this [Electoral] Commission, is not mortifying in any degree, and success will be in all respects more satisfactory.”
    —Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)