The 114th Congress
This evening I went in search of details about what will happen when the 114th Congress convenes this coming Tuesday, and I found a couple of interesting documents provided by the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
Some of you may already know everything contained in them, and that’s great, but since I didn’t, I found the info helpful and figured others might as well. Here are bullet points of the basics in case you can’t (or don’t want to) open the PDFs:
The House
The House follows a well-established first-day routine. The proceedings include
- a prayer led by the chaplain and the Pledge of Allegiance led by the Clerk;
- a quorum call ordered by the Clerk;
- the election of the Speaker, ordered by the Clerk and conducted with the assistance of tellers;
- remarks by the Speaker-elect, followed by his or her swearing-in by the dean of the House;
- adoption of rules for the new Congress;
- announcement of the Speaker's policies on certain floor practices;
- the oath of office for the newly elected and re-elected Members, administered by the Speaker; and
- adoption of various administrative resolutions and unanimous consent agreements.
[…]
The First Day of a New Congress:
A Guide to Proceedings on the House Floor
The Senate
The Senate follows a well-established routine on the opening day of a new Congress. The proceedings include
- swearing in Senators elected or re-elected in the most recent general election (approximately one-third of the Senate);
- establishing the presence of a quorum;
- adopting administrative resolutions;
- adopting standing orders for the new Congress;
- agreeing by unanimous consent to any date, other than the convening date, on which bills and joint resolutions may begin to be introduced; and
- electing a new President pro tempore and one or more Senate officers if there is a vacancy or change in party control.
[…]
The First Day of a New Congress:
A Guide to Proceedings on the Senate Floor
I posted the following in a couple of places over the weekend, but I think it’s a good idea to reiterate it here, for convenience:
List of freshman class members of the 114th United States Congress
Based on a Salon article that Randall linked to, I created a PDF of the available Wiki info for the five Tea Party extremists discussed in therein. You can view it here, however you’ll need to download it in order to see the bookmarks.