Congress in the US is granted all legislative powers by the Constitution, the power to appropriate funds, regulate trade and commerce and to formally declare war. Although the President imposes his will on all of these activities Congress is still an extremely important and powerful body; arguably today it has a superior mandate as President Bush was elected on a popular minority and less recently. Congress is regularly re-elected (every two years) and because of the diversity of the US population it represents a very broad range of interests. …
