Congressional Terms Explained

The legislative branch of the U.S. federal government, created by Article I of the Constitution. It consists of two chambers: the Senate, with 100 members (two per state serving six-year terms), and the House of Representatives, with 435 voting members apportioned among the states by population and serving two-year terms. The House also seats six non-voting members: a delegate each from the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands and the U.S. Virgin Islands, and a resident commissioner from Puerto Rico.

“A Congress” also names a two-year period. Each is numbered; the current one is the 119th Congress (January 2025 to January 2027), and the 120th convenes on January 3, 2027. See How Congress Works for the overview and House vs. Senate for what separates the two chambers.

The adjective: anything of or relating to Congress. A congressional district is a House seat’s territory; a congressional committee is a panel of members; a congressional election is an election for either chamber; the Congressional Record is the daily transcript of floor proceedings. The word refers to both chambers, not only the House.

In everyday use, a member of the House of Representatives. Strictly, every senator is also a member of Congress, but senators are called “Senator” and House members are called “Representative,” “Congressman,” or “Congresswoman.” The neutral term is member of Congress. There are 535 voting members in total.

Each two-year Congress is divided into two sessions, one per calendar year. The first session of the 119th Congress ran through 2025; the second runs through 2026. A session ends when both chambers adjourn sine die (“without a day,” meaning with no date set to return). Bills that have not passed by the end of the second session die and must be reintroduced in the next Congress.

A group of members who meet to coordinate. The word has two main uses in Congress. The party caucus is every member of one party in one chamber: the House Democratic Caucus, the Senate Democratic Caucus, and their Republican counterparts, which call themselves conferences (the House Republican Conference, the Senate Republican Conference). Party caucuses elect the leadership, assign committee seats and set the party’s legislative agenda.

The second use is the issue or identity caucus, formally a Congressional Member Organization: a voluntary group that cuts across committees and sometimes across parties. Examples include the Congressional Black Caucus (founded 1971), the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the House Freedom Caucus (founded 2015), and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus. These caucuses have no formal power over legislation but can act as voting blocs, which is why a caucus of a few dozen members can stall a bill in a narrowly divided House.

“To caucus with” a party means to join its meetings and count toward its numbers without being a member of it. The Senate’s independents caucus with the Democrats, which is why seat counts list them on the Democratic side. See the current party breakdown.

All the members of Congress from one state: its two senators plus its House members. California’s delegation is the largest at 54 members; the six states with a single at-large House seat have delegations of three. Every state’s delegation is listed on the state pages.

The party officer responsible for counting votes and getting members to the floor for them. Each party in each chamber has a Majority or Minority Whip, the second-ranking leadership post after the leader. A “whip count” is the leadership’s tally of how members intend to vote. Current officeholders are on the House leadership and Senate leadership pages.

A formal statement of disapproval adopted by a majority vote of the chamber. In the House, the censured member must stand in the well of the chamber while the Speaker reads the resolution aloud. Censure carries no legal penalty and does not remove the member; any loss of committee assignments is a separate step taken by the party or the chamber.

Censure is rare but has become more frequent. Through the 20th century the House censured members mostly for corruption, physical assault and insulting the Speaker; since 2021 it has censured members several times in disputes over speech and conduct. The Senate has formally censured or “condemned” nine senators in its history, most famously Joseph McCarthy in 1954.

A lesser punishment than censure, also adopted by majority vote. A reprimand is a written rebuke that the member does not have to stand and receive in person. It is the usual outcome of an Ethics Committee finding of misconduct that does not rise to the level of censure.

Removal from office. It requires a two-thirds vote of the member’s own chamber, and it is the only way Congress can remove one of its own members: members of Congress cannot be impeached and cannot be recalled by their state. The House has expelled six members, three in 1861 for supporting the Confederacy and three since 1980 after criminal convictions or an Ethics Committee report. The Senate has expelled fifteen, fourteen of them in 1861 and 1862. See can Congress remove a senator?

A formal meeting of a committee or subcommittee at which witnesses give testimony and members question them. Hearings come in four kinds. Legislative hearings examine a proposed bill. Oversight hearings review how an agency is carrying out existing law, often with the agency head as the witness. Investigative hearings look into alleged wrongdoing. Confirmation hearings, held only in the Senate, examine a presidential nominee before the confirmation vote.

Witnesses can appear voluntarily or under subpoena, and may be sworn in. Lying to Congress under oath is perjury, and refusing a valid subpoena can lead to a contempt of Congress citation. Which committee holds a hearing depends on jurisdiction; see how committees work and who chairs each one.

The phrase means two different things depending on who is using it. In the news, a congressional inquiry is an investigation: a committee, or a select committee created for the purpose, gathers documents, interviews witnesses and holds hearings, then publishes findings. The Watergate committee (1973) and the January 6th committee (2021 to 2022) were select-committee inquiries. An impeachment inquiry is the formal House investigation that precedes any vote on articles of impeachment.

In a member’s district office, a congressional inquiry is casework: the office contacts a federal agency on a constituent’s behalf to ask about a stalled passport, veterans benefits claim, Social Security payment, tax refund or immigration case. Agencies maintain congressional liaison offices to answer these, and an inquiry from a member’s office often moves a case that has been stuck for months. You will need to sign a privacy release form. See how to contact your member and who represents you.

A legal order to appear and testify or to produce documents. Committees can issue subpoenas under rules set by each chamber, usually on the signature of the chair. Ignoring one can be referred to the Justice Department as criminal contempt, pursued as civil contempt in federal court, or, in theory, enforced by the chamber itself.

The ordinary vehicle for legislation. A bill introduced in the House is numbered H.R. (for “House of Representatives,” not “House resolution”); in the Senate, S. To become law it must pass both chambers in identical form and be signed by the president, or have a veto overridden. The full path is on How a Bill Becomes a Law.

A measure that concerns only one chamber and never leaves it. Simple resolutions set chamber rules, create select committees, censure members, and express the opinion (“the sense of the House”) of the chamber. They are not law and are not sent to the president.

Passed by both chambers but not presented to the president, so it is not law. Concurrent resolutions handle matters both chambers share: setting the annual budget resolution that starts the reconciliation process, adjourning for more than three days, or expressing the sense of Congress.

Legally the same as a bill: it passes both chambers, goes to the president, and becomes law with a signature. Congress uses joint resolutions for narrower or more formal actions than a bill, including declarations of war, continuing resolutions to keep the government funded, and votes to overturn an agency regulation. The one exception to the signature rule is a proposed constitutional amendment, which passes as a joint resolution by a two-thirds vote of each chamber and goes straight to the states for ratification.

A joint resolution that funds the government at existing levels for a set period when the twelve annual appropriations bills have not passed by the October 1 start of the fiscal year. When neither the bills nor a CR is in place, the result is a government shutdown.

The minimum number of members who must be present to do business: a majority of the chamber, which is 218 in a full House and 51 in the Senate. A “quorum call” in the Senate is usually a procedural pause rather than a genuine attendance check.

The party holding more than half the seats in a chamber. The majority elects the Speaker or Majority Leader, chairs every committee and controls what reaches the floor. A simple majority is more than half of those voting; a supermajority is a higher threshold written into the Constitution or the rules, most often two-thirds (veto overrides, impeachment convictions, treaties, expulsions, constitutional amendments) or three-fifths (ending a Senate filibuster). Today’s margins are on the party breakdown page.

A filibuster is the use of the Senate’s unlimited-debate rule to block a vote. Cloture is the motion that ends debate; it needs 60 votes for most legislation and a simple majority for nominations. Explained in full on What Is the Filibuster?

The Senate’s way of skipping its own slow procedures. A senator asks that something be agreed to without a recorded vote; if no senator objects, it is done. Most routine Senate business, and the scheduling of nearly all floor action, happens by unanimous consent agreements negotiated between the two leaders.

A senator’s notice to the leadership that they will object to unanimous consent on a bill or nomination. A hold does not block anything permanently, but it forces the majority to spend floor time on a cloture vote, so a single senator can delay hundreds of nominations at once.

The committee meeting at which members amend a bill line by line and vote on whether to report it to the full chamber. Most bills never get a markup; the ones that do are the ones with a real chance of a floor vote.

A temporary joint committee that reconciles the House and Senate versions of a bill into one text both chambers can pass. Covered on What Is a Conference Committee?

A member who has lost reelection or is retiring but still serves until the new Congress begins on January 3. The post-election session in November and December is the lame-duck period.

The geographic area a House member represents. There are 435, each with roughly 760,000 residents. Districts are redrawn after every census. See What Is a Congressional District? and apportionment.

A House seat that covers an entire state because the state has only one representative. Six states are at-large today: Alaska, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. Montana was at-large until it regained a second seat after the 2020 census.

One of three groups of senators whose terms end in the same year, so that about a third of the Senate is elected every two years. Class II is on the ballot in 2026. See Understanding Senate Classes.

The current holder of a seat. An open seat is one where the incumbent is not running again. A special election fills a seat that becomes vacant mid-term; for Senate vacancies most states let the governor appoint a temporary replacement first.

A non-voting House member from the District of Columbia or a U.S. territory. Delegates serve on committees, introduce bills and speak on the floor, but cannot vote on final passage. Puerto Rico’s delegate holds the title Resident Commissioner and serves a four-year term.