Speaker of the House

1. The Constitution says that the House of Representatives will choose their speaker. There are no requirements to be the Speaker of the House.

2.   a. House of Representatives

The Speaker: "presides over proceedings on the House floor, influences which bills go to which committees, influences committee assignments for new members, appoints the party's other leaders, and rules on questions of parliamentary procedure"

The Majority Leader - The second ranking member of the majority party. Usually hand picked by the Speaker. The leader helps plan the party's legislative program.

The Minority Leader-  They lead the minority party and the voting power is generally less. If the leader succeeds in the next congressional election, they could very well be the next Speaker.

      b. Senate
President of the Senate -  the Vice President of the US can only cast a vote in the event of a tie.

President Pro Tempore - if the president of the senate is not there, this man/woman will take his/her place.

3. Both the President and Vice president would have to die in order for the Speaker to become president.

4. Samuel Rayburn served the longest as the Speaker of the House for 17 years.

5. Nancy  Pelosi of California was the first woman to become speaker of the house. She became the Democratic speaker on January 4, 2007.

6. Newt Gingrich served as speaker in 1995-1999. He is famous for the so called republican revolution in the 1990s and he had to resign the speakership for an ethics scandal.

7. John Boehner resigned from speaker recently. He became speaker in 2011 and resigned the Friday after the pope visited. He resigned because he knew that he would lose the fight against his own party and he was trying to do things that were too conservative with President Obama in the white house.

8. Kevin McCarthy was going to be the speaker until his recent comments about Benghazi and giving Hillary Clinton a chance to accuse the house of republican house of a right-wing conspiracy of her. Since that, he decided to not do this because he would be given so much "hell" from his own party and the democrat party.

9. Paul Ryan is wanted by the republicans because he is very firm in his beliefs and would be able to unite the republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in over 80 years. He said he still does not want to be the speaker because he has three school aged kids and a wife and does not want his political role to interfere.

10. He is the Chair of the Committee of Ways and Means. This is the chief tax-writing committee of the House of representatives.

11. It is a committee that is legislative sub-organization that handles a specific duty. There are 50 committees and 100 sub-committees.

12. He wants to stay with his family and said that this job is for an "empty-nester" rather than a guy with three kids.

13. I would not take the job, because it would take me away from my family and as it is shown by Newt Gingrich, politics do not help any with a family.

14. It is not necessary to be the speaker to become president. In fact, James K. Polk of Tennessee is the only one that has become president as the speaker of the house.

15. A caucus is a meeting of a specific political party. There are over 100 caucuses. A committee decides which bills see the floor whereas the caucus deals with anything that is real.

16. The house of freedom caucus is a conservative caucus regarding those who believe the government does not represent the citizens.They want a strong conservative leader who is willing to stand up for their ideas.

17.  Added to the blog separately.