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,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 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.
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.