Exam 4 – Essay #1 The United States Congress is a bicameral legislature that was created with the Connecticut Compromise during the Constitutional Convention of 1787. There are two chambers, the House and the Senate, that are directly elected by the people. The role of Congress is to make law. The House creates tax bills and votes to impeach, while the Senate approves treaties, appointments, and votes to convict the impeached. The Senate is considered the “upper house” because it is more exclusive as there are only 100 members as compared to 435 members of the House. To be a Senator, one must be thirty years of age and a U.S. citizen for at least nine years. House members must be twenty-five years of age and a citizen for only seven years. Another reason the Senate more exclusive is that their term is six years long, but members of the House are up for re-election every two years. Although the Congress is comprised mostly of white males, the number of women, African Americans, and Latinos has increased dramatically since 1991. Each chamber in Congress greatly differs in the people they represent. Members of the House are elected from districts that are apportioned according to how many people live in the area, while there are two Senators from each state regardless of the population of that state. Members of the House usually deal more with local issues, because their constituents are from a specific area, usually relatively small compared to the size of the state. Senators tend to tackle more national and state issues because of their large and diverse constituency. There are two ways in which members of Congress represent its constituents, sociological and agency representation. Sociological representation is when a representative has similar racial, religious or educational background of their constituents, and agency representation is sort of the