8 The government of the USA
The government of the USA has three
separate but equal branches:
Congress, the President, and the
Supreme Court. Women were given
the vote in 1920 and all Americans
can now vote when they are eighteen
years old.
Congress makes the laws.
There are two 'houses' of Congress:
the Senate and the House of
Representatives. There are a hundred
people in the Senate (two from each
state) and they are elected for six
years. There are 435 people in the
House of Representatives, and they
are elected for two years only. States
with more people, like California,
Washington DC
have more Representatives. Some
states, like Wyoming or Delaware,
which do not have many people, only
have one Representative.
The President is head of the
departments of government which
carry out the laws. He (until now the
president has always been a man) is
the leader of the country (like a king
or queen) and head of the army. He is
elected for four years, and can only be
elected twice. He can say 'no' to laws
passed by Congress (but Congress
can also say 'no' to him), and he
chooses the judges for the Supreme
Court. He lives and works in the
White House in Washington DC.
The Supreme Court is the most
important court in the country and
has nine judges; their job is to decide
what the laws mean. They can also
say that Congress has made a law
which is wrong, or that the President
has done something wrong.
The USA is a union of fifty states,
and as well as the national
government in Washington, each
state has its own government. Laws
can be very different from one state
to the next. They say very different Inside Congress
things about, for example, how old
you must be to vote, get married,
leave school or drive a car. Different
states punish criminals differently
too; in some states, you can be killed
for murdering someone, in others you
only go to prison.
The White House
USA fact
• There are only two important
political parties: the Republicans
and the Democrats. The Republicans
want people to work to help
themselves, and so they think that
taxes should be low.
The Democrats think that the
government should help the poor
and so it needs taxes. But the
difference between the two is not
always clear and it is not always easy
to say that one party is on the 'left'
or on the 'right' of the other