VOA · U.S. History
Intermediate · B1–B2learner speed7:382018-12-13public domain
The U.S. History series (The Making of a Nation) tells American history from the colonial era onward in VOA Special English: slow speed, limited vocabulary, long-form storytelling. Generations of learners have used this exact series to break through intermediate listening.
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01Many news stories about the United States government tell about Congress and American lawmakers.
02The U.S.
03Congress is the nation's legislature.
04It is made of two parts, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
05The House of Representatives is called the House for short, and sometimes it is called the People's House.
06That term was chosen as a nickname because the men who wrote the U.S.
07Constitution in 1787 set few restrictions on who could serve there.
08They wanted the House to be as close as possible to everyday Americans.
09One of the writers of the Constitution, James Madison, wrote about the House years later.
10He noted, In other words, House members can be born in the United States or in any other country.
11They can be as young as 25 years old or, as some members have been, into their 90s.
12They do not have to be rich, and they do not have to belong to any religion.
13However, in reality, for many years, only free white men were permitted to serve as lawmakers.
14Women and other groups had limited legal rights, to say the least.
15However, as laws changed over time, members of the House also changed.
16The website of the House of Representatives notes, The House's first African-American member was elected in 1870.
17The first Hispanic member took office in 1877.
18The first woman member in 1917.
19The first Asian-American member in 1957.
20And the first African-American woman member in 1969.
21The country's Constitution writers also made the terms for House members short, compared to the President and Senators.
22Only two years.
23One reason is so House members would have to stay in close contact with the people who live in the area they represent.
24Otherwise, voters would soon have a chance to push them out of office.
25One of the other central ideas about the House of Representatives is that known as proportional representation.
26The idea was that each member of the House would represent 30,000 U.S.
27citizens.
28That situation would enable states with large populations to send more lawmakers to Congress.
29But the Constitution writers of 1787 struggled with how to count a state's population.
30At that time, more than 650,000 enslaved people lived in the country.
31After much debate, the Constitution writers, decided the enslaved population would be only partly counted for legal and tax purposes.
32The decision is known as the Three-Fifths Compromise.
33The first U.S.
34House of Representatives had 67 members.
35As the country's population grew, the number of House members increased, from 105 to 142, and so on.
36After the approval of constitutional amendments following the Civil War, most formerly enslaved people were fully counted in the state's population.
37The House continued to grow into the 20th century.
38Finally, in 1929, lawmakers officially limited the total number of House members to 435.
39Today, each member of the House represents about 700,000 people.
40Members of the House, along with the Senators, develop national laws.
41They also help voters who live in their districts deal with problems related to the government.
42And members of the House have other important jobs.
43They can investigate people with government ties who are suspected of wrongdoing.
44For example, members of the House have looked into cases of bribery, corruption, and abuses of power.
45In the 1950s, the House Un-American Activities Committee demanded information from private citizens suspected of communist activity.
46But critics said the committee had gone too far.
47In time, the Supreme Court limited Congress's power to investigate issues related to the law instead of people's private beliefs.
48Over its history, the House has brought impeachment charges against government officials, including presidents, more than 60 times.
49But only a few officials were removed from office.
50Of those, some were federal judges accused of being drunk at court.
51Members of Congress also have what some call the power of the purse.
52In other words, they control how the government spends public money.
53The House of Representatives website explains that the Constitution writers wanted to put spending decisions in the hands of the people's representatives in Congress.
54Similarly, the Constitution writers did not want the chief executive to decide alone whether to take the country to war.
55They wanted to make war difficult to enter.
56They also wanted to prevent the president from going to war because of political or personal interests.
57So they wrote that the Congress had the power to declare war.
58But in truth, lawmakers have only officially declared war 11 times.
59The last time was in 1942.
60Since then, Congress has simply approved the use of military force.
61I'm Kelly Jean Kelly.
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