435 members serving two-year terms

100 members serving rotating six-year terms

Speaker's referral of bills to committee is hard to challenge.

Referral decisions easy to challenge.

Committees almost always consider legislation first.

Committee consideration easily bypassed.

Rules Committee powerful; controls time of debate, admissibility of amendments.

Rules Committee weak; few limits on debate or amendments.

Debate usually limited to one hour.

Unlimited debate unless shortened by unanimous consent or by invoking cloture.

Non-germane amendments may not be introduced from floor.

Non-germane amendments may be introduced (riders).

To levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises.

To borrow money.

To regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the states, and with Indian tribes.

To establish rules for naturalization (that is, becoming a citizen) and bankruptcy.

To coin money, set its value, and punish counterfeiting.

To fix the standard of weights and measures.

To establish a post office and post roads.

To issue patents and copyrights to inventors and authors.

To create courts inferior to (that is, below) the Supreme Court.

To define and punish piracies, felonies on the high seas, and crimes against the law of nations.

To declare war.

To raise and support an army and navy and make rules for their governance.

To provide for a militia (reserving to the states the right to appoint militia officers and to train the militia under congressional rule).

To exercise exclusive legislative powers over the seat of government (that is, the District of Columbia) and over places purchased to be federal facilities (forts, arsenals, dockyards, and "other needful buildings.")

To "make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for the carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States."