Members of Congress

Article I of the Constitution sets the qualifications: a representative must be at least 25, a citizen for seven years, and an inhabitant of the state, and a senator must be at least 30, a citizen for nine years, and an inhabitant of the state. Representatives serve two-year terms and senators six-year terms, with a third of the Senate elected every two years. The House has had 435 voting members since 1913, a number fixed by law in 1929, and the Senate has 100. Senators were chosen by state legislatures until the Seventeenth Amendment, ratified in 1913, provided for direct election.

Rank-and-file members have been paid $174,000 a year since 2009, with higher salaries for the Speaker and party leaders, and Congress has voted repeatedly to forgo automatic cost-of-living raises. The Twenty-seventh Amendment, proposed in 1789 and ratified in 1992, delays any pay change until after the next election. The Speech or Debate Clause protects members from being sued or prosecuted for their legislative acts, and members have budgets for staff and district offices. In 1995 the Supreme Court held in U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton that states cannot impose term limits on members of Congress, so limits would require a constitutional amendment.

Each chamber judges the elections and qualifications of its members and may punish them for disorderly behavior, censure them by majority vote, or expel them by a two-thirds vote. Only 21 members have ever been expelled, most for supporting the Confederacy, and the House expelled a member in December 2023 for the first time since 2002. Members file annual financial disclosures, and proposals to ban members from trading individual stocks have drawn bipartisan support but have not become law. Supporters of the current system say it preserves members' independence, while critics say pay, perks, and weak ethics enforcement leave too much room for conflicts of interest.