Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
It's always confused me how USians refer to different congressional periods as happening "under" certain presidents as if they have any actual part to play in the legislative process itself. I live in a country where the head of government is the Prime Minister, whose equivalent would be the House Majority Leader, and actually has a lot to say about the legislative agenda.
The President in the USA can veto laws. In a Constitutional sense, this gives them more power than any other single legislator. They are also the leader of their party, which can make them just as influential as the Speaker of the House (House Majority leader) when their party has the majority. The public also pays more attention to the President than the Speaker. For these reasons, and because Presidents have defined terms, it's convenient shorthand to describe a period of time.
The Speaker of the House is not the same as the House Majority Leader. The current Speaker is Mike Johnson and the current Majority Leader is Steve Scalise.
True. I see that Parliament also has a Speaker of the House with a similar role to the US Speaker of the House. I was confused why you equated the Prime Minister with the House Majority Leader, rather than the Speaker of the House. It sounds like in the UK, when a party gets a majority in Commons, their leader usually becomes PM, while in the US, their leader becomes Speaker.
Yeah, I guess in the US the Speaker usually wields their power in a very partisan manner, whereas in parliamentary systems they are usually supposed to act as bipartisan as possible.