The Federal Government

Most American civics education is entirely about this level, which produces a strange result: people can recite the three branches and still have no idea how a federal decision is actually made or where an ordinary person can get a word in.

Here is the number that reframes it. In the 118th Congress, covering 2023 and 2024, 19,315 bills and resolutions were introduced. About three percent became law in some form, and only about one percent passed as standalone bills. Meanwhile federal agencies issued thousands of binding rules.

If you only watch Congress, you are watching the smaller half.

Who Sits There

The legislative branch

Congress has 535 voting members. The House has 435, elected every two years from districts of roughly equal population, so every one of them faces voters constantly. The Senate has 100, two per state regardless of population, serving six-year terms with a third of the seats up every two years. Six additional non voting delegates represent the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the United States Virgin Islands, American Samoa and the Northern Mariana Islands. They can serve on committees and shape legislation but cannot vote on final passage.

The executive branch

The President serves four-year terms and is chosen through the Electoral College rather than by national popular vote. Underneath sit the departments and agencies, and this is where nearly all the day-to-day work of the federal government happens: Social Security, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, Labor, Education, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and dozens more. Most of them are staffed by career civil servants who stay across administrations.

The judicial branch

Ninety-four federal district courts hear cases first. Thirteen courts of appeals review them. The Supreme Court has nine justices, appointed by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and serving for life. Federal judges at every level are appointed rather than elected, which is the opposite of most state judiciaries.

What the Federal Government Decides That Nothing Else Does

• Social Security, Medicare and federal benefits. Eligibility, benefit amounts, appeals.
• Immigration and citizenship. States have no authority over this.
• The federal tax code. Income tax rates, credits including the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, and what is deductible.
• Money and interest rates. The currency, and through the Federal Reserve, the interest rates underneath your mortgage and your savings account.
• Civil rights enforcement. The federal floor on discrimination in employment, housing, education, voting and public accommodation. States may go further. They may not go below it.
• Workplace, environmental, food, drug and financial rules. What your employer must do about safety, what a lender must disclose, what may be in the water, what a drug must prove before it is sold.
• The military and foreign affairs.
• Interstate commerce, patents, copyright and the postal service.

How a Federal Decision Actually Gets Made

Track one: legislation, the slow way

A bill is introduced, assigned to a committee, and in the overwhelming majority of cases dies there without a hearing. If it survives committee it goes to the floor, then to the other chamber, where the process repeats. Both chambers must pass identical text. Then the President signs or vetoes, and a veto can be overridden by two-thirds of both chambers.

The Senate adds a further step in practice. Most legislation needs 60 votes to end debate before it can get a simple majority vote on passage, which is why a bill with majority support can still fail.

This track produces a few hundred laws out of nearly twenty thousand introduced measures per Congress.

Track two: rulemaking, where most binding law comes from

Congress passes a law in broad terms and directs an agency to work out the details. The agency then writes a regulation, and under the Administrative Procedure Act at 5 U.S.C. 553 it generally must do three things: publish the proposed rule in the Federal Register, open a public comment period, and respond to the significant comments it receives before issuing a final rule. Skipping those steps is grounds for a court to strike the rule down.

This is the part almost nobody uses. Comment counts on rules that affect millions of people are frequently in the dozens or low hundreds, and a large share of those are identical form letters, which agencies count but weigh lightly.

A specific, factual comment from somebody the rule will actually touch is a different object entirely. It has to be addressed on the record. It builds the administrative record a court later reviews. And it is the single largest gap between the influence an ordinary American has and the influence they use.

How to comment on a federal rule before it takes effect

How You Get In

Comment on rules

Proposed rules and their comment windows are published at regulations.gov. Windows are usually 30 to 60 days and they close hard.

Contact your members

You have one representative and two senators. Offices count contacts, and they distinguish sharply between a form email, an individual email, a phone call and a letter. A call to a district office from a constituent who states their town and their reason is weighted very differently from a mass email. Congressional staff, not members, read almost all of it, and staff are the people who write the policy anyway.

Casework, which is the underused one

Every congressional office employs caseworkers whose entire job is untangling federal cases for constituents. A delayed passport, a Social Security determination, a veterans benefits claim, an IRS problem, an immigration file that has sat past normal processing times. This is a constituent service at no cost, it is not political, and most people never learn it exists.

How congressional casework works and when to ask for it

Records

The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552, lets any person request records from a federal agency. You do not have to explain why you want them. There are exemptions and there are delays, and it still works more often than people assume.

What This Does Not Mean

It does not mean Congress is irrelevant. The laws that pass are frequently enormous, and they set the terms every agency then works inside. It means the ratio of attention to influence is worse here than anywhere else.

It does not mean rulemaking is a back door. It is the ordinary, statutory way detailed federal law has been made for eighty years, and the public comment step exists precisely so that it is not a back door.

It does not mean a comment or a call guarantees an outcome. It guarantees a record. Records are what advocates, reporters, courts and future officials read.

It is not legal advice. If you are dealing with an immigration matter, a benefits denial or a civil rights complaint, speak with a licensed attorney or an accredited representative about your own case. We are a private nonprofit and we are not affiliated with any government agency.

Common Questions About the Federal Government

What does the federal government actually do?

National defense and foreign policy. Immigration and citizenship. Currency, and regulation of commerce between the states. Social Security and Medicare. Federal courts and federal crimes. Interstate highways, air traffic, food and drug safety, environmental standards. Broadly, the things no single state can do alone, plus the large benefit programs.

How many members of Congress are there?

435 voting members of the House of Representatives, apportioned among the states by population and reallocated after each census, plus 100 senators, two from every state regardless of size. The House also seats nonvoting delegates from the District of Columbia and the territories.

How long are the terms?

House members serve two years, so the entire House is elected in every even numbered year. Senators serve six years, staggered so about a third of the Senate is up each cycle. The President serves four years and is limited to two terms by the Twenty Second Amendment.

Who is my representative in Congress?

One House member for the district you live in, and two senators for your whole state. Every American with a residential address has exactly three, and the House and Senate both publish a lookup by address and ZIP that costs nothing code.

What is a federal agency and who runs it?

An agency carries out laws in a particular area: the Social Security Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Food and Drug Administration and many more. Most sit under the President in the executive branch, are led by appointees the Senate confirms, and are funded and overseen by Congress, which can also abolish them.

What can a member of Congress actually do for me personally?

More than most people realize. Every congressional office runs constituent casework, meaning staff who intervene with federal agencies on behalf of people in the district whose case is stuck: a delayed benefit, an unanswered agency, a passport problem. The service costs nothing, it is a core part of the job, and it is enormously underused.

Why does so little seem to get through Congress?

Because passage requires two chambers to agree on identical text and a President to sign it, and because most bills stop in committee without a vote. That is a design feature rather than a malfunction: the system was built to make action require broad agreement.

Keep Going

The full map: who decides what, at every level. Your state government, which decides more of your daily life than this level does. Calling versus emailing Congress, and what each one actually does.

Sources

Bills introduced and enacted in the 118th Congress, 2023 to 2024: GovTrack congressional statistics, 19,315 measures introduced with about three percent enacted in some form. Federal rulemaking, notice and comment: Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. 553. Public records: Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. 552. Composition of Congress: 435 House seats, 100 Senate seats, and six non voting delegates. Federal judiciary structure: 94 district courts, 13 courts of appeals, and a Supreme Court of nine justices. Last checked August 20, 2026.