{"id":33168,"date":"2023-01-09T03:46:43","date_gmt":"2023-01-08T22:16:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=33168"},"modified":"2025-04-19T19:49:27","modified_gmt":"2025-04-19T14:19:27","slug":"us-house-speaker","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/us-house-speaker\/","title":{"rendered":"US House Speaker"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3><strong>What\u2019s in today\u2019s article?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Who is a Speaker of the House?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>What is the role of the Speaker?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>Why is the Speaker of the House so important?<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>How is a Speaker chosen?<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why in news?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>After losing multiple votes for Speaker due to opposition from his own party, Republican leader Kevin McCarthy finally became the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.<\/li>\n<li>In a five-day-long saga, which was the longest speakership election in 160 years, the California Republican finally managed to garner enough support to win the top job.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Who is a Speaker of the House?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The US Constitution established the role of Speaker of the House, which oversees the lower chamber of Congress.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The Speaker is both traditionally and historically a sitting member of the majority party, though this is not a constitutional requirement.<\/li>\n<li>Therefore, in addition to leading the House of Representatives, they are also leader of the majority party in the chamber.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>What is the role of the Speaker?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/lh6.googleusercontent.com\/l2gVv0wx7L4LiHG6FyGQmEOHHI9DuCjfKXODhIsgUpXnHLrShUUzEJyOYxxdEWh8TdRCwx7I_TOBjAKE68RFTHEC2zwr2bGjxaAyrDTlGeev4syznHSnisgery8Uh_wAinsKrBzdjdNYP12vPSxK-A\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Image caption: Functions of speaker<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>At a practical level, the Speaker:\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>sets the House&#8217;s legislative agenda,\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>controls committee assignments,\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>sets the vote and work calendar, and\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>is responsible for keeping their party members unified behind major initiatives.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The Speaker is <u>second in line for the presidency<\/u>, following the Vice-President, in the event of the President being incapable of continuing in office.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Why is the Speaker of the House so important?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Depending on the partisan makeup of Congress, they can make or break a US president&#8217;s agenda, stymie opposition, and spearhead their party&#8217;s biggest legislative initiatives.<\/li>\n<li>A shrewd and effective Speaker will be able to marshal their members behind their party&#8217;s agenda, and control rebellious lawmakers by doling out incentives or punishments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2><strong>How is a Speaker chosen?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>No House without a speaker<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The House of Representatives functions on a two-year cycle, known as a &#8220;session.&#8221;\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>The mid-term elections were held in the United States on 8 November, 2022.<\/li>\n<li><u>The new Congress began on 3 January 2023<\/u> and Republicans will be in the majority.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The very first thing a new session of the House of Representatives must do is vote for a Speaker of the House.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>Without that person in place, the chamber cannot move on to any other function, including swearing-in members.\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The chamber must continue to hold votes until a Speaker is elected.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Nomination for Speaker<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>In the weeks after an election, the Republican conference and the Democratic caucus hold an informal vote among their members.\n<ul>\n<li>This voting is done to decide who they want to nominate to lead their party.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><u>But members are not obligated to vote for the party&#8217;s chosen candidate<\/u>.<\/li>\n<li>While it has been the tradition for the speaker candidate to be a member of the House, <strong>it is not required<\/strong>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Voting for post of Speaker<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>The vote for Speaker requires a candidate to receive the support of a majority of the House &#8211; 218 votes (out of the 435 members of the House).\u00a0<\/li>\n<li>The existing leader of the majority party is usually presumed to be the person to assume the speakership.<\/li>\n<li>For more than a century, the Speaker of the House was decided on the first vote.\u00a0\n<ul>\n<li>However, this time, a record-making 15 voting rounds were conducted before McCarthy succeeded in acquiring the Speaker\u2019s gavel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<h3><strong>Q1)<\/strong><strong>\u00a0What is US Congress?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>The US Congress is made up of two parts &#8211; the House of Representatives and the Senate. There are a total of 535 Members of Congress &#8211; 100 serve in the U.S. Senate and 435 serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.Control of these two houses is decided by the midterm election.<strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Q2) How long do members of Congress\u2019 terms last?<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Members of the House of Representatives serve two-year terms and are considered for reelection every second year. Senators however, serve six-year terms and elections to the Senate are staggered over even years so that only about 1\/3 of the Senate is up for reelection during any election.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Source:\u00a0<\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.thehindu.com\/news\/international\/explained-gaining-the-gavel-the-role-of-the-us-house-speaker\/article66354379.ece\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Explained | Gaining the gavel: the role of the U.S. House Speaker<\/u><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0|\u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-us-canada-64168529\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>BBC<\/u><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0|\u00a0 \u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-global\/kevin-mccarthy-far-right-republicans-speaker-8367405\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>Indian Express<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>US House Speaker oversees the working of the lower chamber of Congress i.e., House of Representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":33169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-33168","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-mains-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}