Who is the Speaker of the House?
About this video
John Dickerson explains that the Speaker of the House is an office outlined in the Constitution. The Speaker does not have to be a House member or from the majority party, but in practice always has been, and is chosen by whoever gets the most votes of the members voting.
You'll be able to
- state that the Speaker of the House is an office outlined in the Constitution.
- distinguish what the rules require from what tradition has always done in choosing a Speaker.
- describe how the Speaker is elected.
Key words
- Speaker of the House
- The leader of the House of Representatives.
- Constitution
- The document that sets out how the US government is organized and its basic rules.
- majority party
- The party with more than half of the seats in a chamber of Congress.
- tradition
- The way something has always been done, even if no rule requires it.
Transcript
- [Narrator] Who is the Speaker of the House and what do they do?
- The office of the Speaker of the House is actually outlined in the Constitution. That's one of the things that makes the Speaker of the House unique. The Speaker of the House does not have to be a member of the House although there has never been a Speaker who has not been a member of the House.
And traditionally the Speaker of the House is the member picked by the majority party. Doesn't have to be from the majority party but that's always the way it's worked out and essentially everybody in the House gets together and whoever gets the most votes of the people voting.
It's just the people voting, not necessarily the entire House. Whoever gets the most votes becomes the Speaker of the House.
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