110th United States Congress

From dKosopedia

Overview
110th - United States Congress

Senate Majority Leader	Harry Reid
Speaker of the House	Nancy Pelosi
Previous	109th Congress
Next	111th Congress

The 110th United States Congress is the present session of the Legislature of the United States federal government. This Congress first convened on January 4, 2007 and expires on January 3, 2009. Of the 435 members of the House of Representatives, 433 were elected in the November 2006 House elections, and two were elected in December 2006 runoffs. United States Senators are elected in staggered terms: 33 of the 100 from class I were elected in the November 2006 Senate elections. The remainder were elected in 2002 Senate elections (class II) and 2004 Senate elections (class III).

1 Dates of sessions
2 Summary
3 Weekly Articles
4 Composition
5 Major Legislation Passed
- 5.1 110th Congress (1st term 2007)
- 5.2 Previous Congresses
6 Resources

Dates of sessions

Two sessions, roughly paralleling the calendar years 2007 and 2008, are scheduled.

First Session: Began January 4, 2007.
Second Session: Date to be determined (will begin on or after January 3, 2008)

Summary

The 110th Congress began with its traditional swearing in and performing many of the ceremonial and pedestrian activities associated with both a new Congress, and the change in control of both chambers to the Democrats. This was most pronounced in the House where Nancy Pelosi was elected as the first female Speaker of the House in the nation's history.

As the session opened in January 2007, the Democratic Leadership quickly undertook it's promised 100-Hour Plan, and began a rapid fire passage of ethics reforms and re-instating the PAYGO rules, pass and implementing the 9/11 Commissions recommendations, increasing the federal minimum wage to make it more fair, passing legislation easing Federal restrictions on Stem Cell research, fix Medicare Prescription Drug Benefits by giving Medicare the power to negotiate lower drug prices, cutting federal Student Loan interest rates, rolling back subsidies to "Big Oil", and guaranteeing to fight privatization of Social Security. The Congress also undertook debate surrounding George W. Bush's proposed Iraq troop escalation of 2007.

By January 18, 2007, 87 business hours after the swearing-in, the House had passed all the measures of the 100-Hour Plan. though the legislation still has to pass the Senate and receive the President's signature (or override his veto) to become law.

Weekly Articles

110th Congress (week 1) - January 1 - 7, 2007
110th Congress (week 2) - January 8 - 14, 2007
110th Congress (week 3) - January 15 - 21, 2007
110th Congress (week 4) - January 22 - 28, 2007
110th Congress (week 5) - January 29 - February 4, 2007
110th Congress (week 6) - February 5 - 11, 2007
110th Congress (week 7) - February 12 - 18, 2007

Composition

The Democrats control a majority in both chambers for the first time since the 103rd Congress in 1993 – 1995. Notably, no Democratic-held seats fell to the Republicans in the elections to the 110th Congress. Democrat Nancy Pelosi became the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House. Keith Ellison became the first Muslim in Congress; Mazie Hirono and Hank Johnson are the first Buddhists.

See the current membership of Congress for a full details of the current membership status of the 110th Congress.

Major Legislation Passed

See here for Legislation currently in Congress

(NOTE: The legislation below is placeholder content which is for format/structure purposes only; this section may be better integrated with the above link)

110th Congress (1st term 2007)

Passed by the House

January 10 - House passes an ammendment (HR 2) to the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 which will increase the Federal minimum wage standard for the first time since 1997.
January 9 - House passes the Implementing the 9/11 Commission Recommendations Act of 2007 (HR 1) to implement the changes recomended by the 9/11 Commission which were not fulfilled by the previous Republican controlled Congress and the Bush Administration.
January 4 - House adopts new of the Rules of the House (HR 6) to enact House ethics reforms to address abuses under the the previous Republican controlled Congress.