2021届巴蜀中学新高考英语美国文化外刊[17]美国国会两个部分（含注解与翻译）

2021届巴蜀中学新高考英语 美国文化外刊[17] （含翻译与重点词汇短语注解） What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress? Answer: The Senate and House (of Representatives) Explanation: In the United States, the word Congress is used to refer to (or talk about) the legislative (or lawmaking) part of American government. Most people know this meaning of the word. But did you know that there is another meaning of the word congress? Congress also means a meeting of legislators (or the people who make laws). In the U.S. government, you will hear both meanings of this word used. In fact, a new congress—meaning a new meeting—starts every two years. The first congress was held in 1774. The current congress, then, is the 110th Congress, which first convened (or met) on January 4, 2007. When the first congress was held in 1774, Congress was still unicameral, meaning that it had only one part or group of legislators. However, the leaders of the country very quickly realized (or noticed) that the new American government was not very efficient (or didn't do things very quickly or very well), so they wanted to change the system. One of the major disputes (or disagreements) about Congress was how the 50 states would be represented in the federal (or national) government. People from small states thought that each state should be represented equally (or in the same way). People from large states thought that states with a higher population (or more people living there) should have more power to make decisions. The solution (or the way to fix the problem) was to write a new constitution (or document that creates the government for a country) and make the Congress become bicameral (or with two parts). How does a bicameral Congress allow people in large and small states to have better representation? The answer is in how the Congress works. The two parts of the Congress are the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate has equal representation, which means that each state has two representatives. The House of