The senate is no longer congressional?

May 25, 2017 11:48 AM

The lede of this news article about yesterday's dustup in Montana states: "The Republican candidate for Montana's sole congressional seat was charged..." Wikipedia confirms that Montana has only one representative in the House, but they have 2 senators like everyone else and last I checked the Senate is part of the US Congress. I saw similar phrasing in a few other articles about the incident. Surely this is not correct. What gives?
posted by duoshao to Law & Government (7 answers total)

Best answer: It is technically correct that Congress contains two houses, the Senate and House of Representatives. Because "the House" doesn't have its own differentiating snazzy name (like the Senate does) it is often/sometimes referred to as Congress.

As an example, a google search for "members of congress" returns the wiki list of members of the HoR, not senators.

It is largely contextual a to whether an individual use of "Congress" refers to solely the House of Reps or the entire legislative branch including the Senate.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 11:53 AM on May 25, 2017 [15 favorites]

Best answer: "Congressional district" (and by extension "congressional seat," "congressional election" etc) is universally understood to mean a House district. In the same way, congressman or congresswoman generally means a member of the House even though Senators are technically also congresspeople.
posted by theodolite at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2017 [10 favorites]

Although in the specific instance discussed here there is no "congressional district" distinct from the area represented by the two Senators from Montana . . . because Montana's sole member of the House represents the whole state.
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 12:04 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I've noticed this distinction for awhile now, and it still bugs me. It's lets the Senate off the hook when people use the word "Congress."
posted by rhizome at 8:47 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I have seen "Congressman" used where "Representative" would be more accurate for as long as I've been reading about politics, so coming up on 53 years now. The usage you cite is not strictly correct, but it is time honored.

I'm not willing to do the research, but it wouldn't surprise me to find out that predates the Civil War.
posted by Bruce H. at 10:01 PM on May 25, 2017 [1 favorite]

I appreciate all the good explanations provided here. However, I believe it is clear that when the Constitution itself uses the word "Congress" it clearly means House and Senate together. For example, the First Amendment begins, "Congress shall make no law . . . "

Exceptional_Hubris has a good point as to why 'Congress(person)' has been appropriated by House of Representative members; Houseman and Housewoman don't have the same level of dignity.
posted by namret at 4:24 PM on May 26, 2017

Why can't it ever be "Representative?"
posted by rhizome at 5:32 PM on May 26, 2017