The U.S. Congress has many roles. It makes laws that influence our own lives. It holds hearings, and conducts investigations to oversee the executive branch, and other things. Congress is divided into two parts which are the House of Representatives and the Senate, making congress bicameral. The two houses of Congress have equal but unique roles in the federal government. Senators represent their entire states, but members of the House represent individual districts. The number of districts in each state is determined by a state’s population. Each state has a minimum of one representative in Congress. The senate is made up of 100 members, and the HOR is made up of 435 members. While they share legislative responsibilities, each house also has special constitutional duties and powers. House leadership includes the speaker, majority and minority leaders, assistant leaders, whips and a party caucus or conference.The majority senate leader right now is charles chumer, and the minority is mitch mcconnell. The speaker (Nancy Pelosi) is the leader of the House and also has other roles. Majority and minority leaders act for their own parties on the House floor. Whips are mainly responsible for counting heads and rounding up party members for votes and quorum calls, and they occasionally stand in for the majority or minority leaders in their absence.A caucus is a meeting of supporters or members of a specific political party or movement. There are different committees in congress.The role of a conference committee is to work out the differences in bills to hopefully go into a law. The standing committee has jurisdiction over legislation.The house Rules Committee dictates how a legislation gets to the floor, how many amendments will be considered, and how much time will be allowed for debate. Congress exercises their  power of investigating federal agencies largely through its congressional committee system. Congress spends a lot of time usually on Hearings/investigations. Congress has many. In order to stall and delay legislation in the senate, there is a unique thing called filibustering.  It is a way for one person to delay or entirely prevent debate or votes on a specific piece of legislation.If you want to have full control you need 66 senators for filibustering.Nothing gets done in congress without pork barreling. This is where interest groups really start to manipulate the situation. It is basically an abuse of money, and it funds specific projects and their location within a particular congressional district. The executive branch has the pres. And other things. There is a cabinet which are the advisor for the president. We have a divided government, which is when one political party controls the executive and the other political party controls something else (like congress). Right now the democrats control the senate and the house. The executive branch has executive privilege which is a unique power that the president can circumvent other branches of government if it is constitutional. A pocket veto is the constitutional power that the  president has to send a bill back to Congress with reasons for rejecting it. If a president dies, resigns, or is removed from office by impeachment, the vice-president succeeds to the office. The order goes ​​Vice President, speaker of the house, president pro tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, and the Secretary of the Treasury. Discretionary Authority is an agency’s ability to decide whether or not to take certain courses of action when implementing existing laws. Specifically the Federal bureaucracy. Red tape is the bridge between the executive office and the federal bureaucracy, Besides the powers already listed, some of the main powers of the executive branch include; Command the Military, Grant reprieves and pardons, make treaties, Appoint ambassadors and officers, approve or veto bills, and grant commissions and call special sessions of congress

Congress and the branches of work together to run and investigate the actions of the federal government.