Hi Brit here from across the pond.

Could someone kindly explain to me in a dummy/idiot’s guide format the difference between the two please 🙂.

14 comments

  1. Congress refers to both the senate and the house of representatives. So a senator and a house representative are both congressmen but for different parts of congress.

  2. Congress is a bicameral legislature, like your Parliament. The Senate is one of the two houses of Congress; the other is the House of Representatives. So a Senator and a Representative are both “elected officials in Congress.” It’s comparable to your House of Lords and House of Commons.

    If you want to get into details, Representatives are elected every two years (with all of them up for election at the same time), and Senators every six (with a third of the seats up for election every two years). Every state has two Senators, and a number of Representatives roughly proportional to the population of the state. The houses have some different duties (for example only the Senate has the duty of approving federal judges that the President wants to appoint and members of the President’s cabinet), but both must approve new legislation.

  3. Congress includes the Senate. Congress is the House and the Senate. Roughly equivalent to your House of Commons and House of Lords.

  4. Senators serve six year terms, there are two per state (total of 100), and the Senate has certain reserved powers like approving judges and cabinet members. I think the Senate votes on treaties too.

    Representatives serve two year terms, each state gets a certain number proportional to population; total number is fixed at 435 and every state has to have at least one. Spending bills must originate in the house.

    Most laws have to be passed in both chambers; if something fails in the house or the Senate then it does not become law.

  5. The House is the lower house of Congress, the amount of Representatives per state are determined based on population.

    The Senate is the upper house, it has two Senators per state regardless of population.

    You have to have a majority in both houses to make new laws. The House tends to be more populist, the Senate tends to be more institutionalist.

    That’s the very simplified version, but let me know if you’re curious about anything specific.

  6. Congress consists of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate exists to provide equal representation to the states (each state in the union gets two senators). Representatives provide equal voice to the population and are allocated based upon the population with each Rep representing the same number of citizens.

    This balances the needs of the individual people with the needs of the states. After all, the US is a federation of independent states that have ceded international representation to the federal government which speaks for all of them collectively in international matters.

  7. Expanding on earlier answers:
    Representatives are distributed per state based on population. This has broken down since the total size was capped a hundred years ago. Representatives serve two year terms.

    Each state regardless of size has two senators who serve six year terms. One third is elected every two years with each state’s senators elected in different years.

    In order for a law to be passed it must pass BOTH chambers.

  8. senate (full of senators) = house of lords

    House of representatives (full of representatives) = house of commons

    Congress (full of congressmen) refers to both bodies

    Our system is loosely based on yours

    Beyond that, there are some structural differences (we aren’t parliamentarians).

    Obviously we don’t have lords but the senate was originally envisioned as being more removed from the democratic process (they serve longer terms, each state has equal representation regardless of population, and they have power over certain things the representatives don’t)

    Our house has shorter terms, is based on population, and does not do most of the high ceremony stuff (hold trials of impeachment, affirm judges and cabinet members). They do however have the right to call an impeachment (technically to impeach just means to call the trial).

  9. Okay so the US legislature is bicameral like the UK. The Senate is the upper house like the House of Lords.
    How the Senate works is that each state regardless of size has two senators and senators are elected to six year terms. So that’s why every US election cycle US news reporters will say stuff like, “Democrats are defending x number of Senate seats this year”. The elections are staggered so senators like Susan Collins and Lindsey Graham who got re- elected two years ago have four years until they have to run.

    The House is the lower chamber. It’s the more complicated one. The number of seats in the House a state has depends on its population. Also it’s legislature has to decide what the districts in the state look like. So that’s why you probably hear about these lawsuits of one party challenging the congressional map.
    In the House, the representatives have to run every two years. So that means this November all of the House is up for re- election.
    They often call members of the House Congress men/ women but Congress actually is made up of the House and Senate combined. That’s where your confusion is probably from.

    They just call senators “senator”

  11. The Senate is two reps/ state. Great for low population states, sucks for high population states.

    Congress has reps defined by the population. Great for high population states, sucks for low population states.

    Having both systems is the best attempt thus far to accommodate various population densities.

    Edit: sorry if this sounds like ELI5, but I feel like OP is looking for that rather than something complicated.

  12. Lots of good explanations here but people are forgetting how senators were originally elected.

    The STATE legislatures used to appoint the 2 federal senators. The Senate was supposed to represent the states, and the House the people.

    This was amended to our constitution and now senators are democratically elected, not appointed

  13. The house has more representatives per state. The Senate only ever has two pre-state in order for a bill to become a law, it needs to pass the House of Representatives and then it has to pass the Senate and it goes through changes in both. The house is generally more efficient because it doesn’t have the filibuster but the Senate does because whichever party isn’t in power doesn’t want the other one to pass bills so it never gets fixed

    ( The filibuster if you don’t know is basically kind of a mistake made when our founding fathers were writing the rules pretty much it allows us senator to talk for a long-ass time and use up all the time to debate the actual important things about bills and as long as they remain talking they can talk about whatever they want like for instance, when Ted Cruz started reading Dr. Seuss books even though he actually didn’t have to because the rules have changed slightly. If you want more information about it, John Oliver did a peace on it a while ago on Last Week Tonight it’s on YouTube and it’s entirely if you’re curious)

  14. Other people have answered already, but I just want to mention that it’s relatively common for people to use the terms “Congressman” or “Member of Congress” specifically for members of the House of Representatives while still using “Senator” for members of the Senate. I don’t know why, but I think it’s because the word “Representative” without context is kind of vague. Senators are lowercase-r representatives, after all.

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