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:
“The white American man makes the white American woman maybe not superfluous but just a little kind of decoration. Not really important to turning around the wheels of the state. Well the black American woman has never been able to feel that way. No black American man at any time in our history in the United States has been able to feel that he didn’t need that black woman right against him, shoulder to shoulder—in that cotton field, on the auction block, in the ghetto, wherever.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“You are, I am sure, aware that genuine popular support in the United States is required to carry out any Government policy, foreign or domestic. The American people make up their own minds and no governmental action can change it.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“So here they are, the dog-faced soldiers, the regulars, the fifty-cents-a-day professionals riding the outposts of the nation, from Fort Reno to Fort Apache, from Sheridan to Stark. They were all the same. Men in dirty-shirt blue and only a cold page in the history books to mark their passing. But wherever they rode and whatever they fought for, that place became the United States.”
—Frank S. Nugent (1908–1965)
“Madam, I may be President of the United States, but my private life is nobody’s damn business.”
—Chester A. Arthur (1829–1886)
“I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother’s side was not an Indian chief.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)